


Shake Shake Shake (And Shut Your Mouth)

by Carukia



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Assassin AU, M/M, Sentinel AU, Slow Burn, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-14 22:32:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3427940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carukia/pseuds/Carukia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael has never told anyone about being a Guide – not Geoff, not Burnie and Matt, not a single damn person – because he doesn’t want to lose his job and, honestly, it’s never come up before. Until right now.</p><p>The man who just barged into the office is a Sentinel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Falling Down a Rabbit Hole

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started with inspiration from a Marianas Trench song (as all my Mavin fics are), this morphed into something completely different. So I took the title from a different MT song instead (and promptly started naming chapter from a different, non MT, song entirely).
> 
> In a world where Sentinels are drawn to law enforcement and military-based jobs, and where their bonded Guides are expected to follow them and their careers, Guide Michael decides, fuck no - he's going to be the important one, heightened senses or no. He stumbles into a career in political assassinations, and everything is going great.
> 
> Until Gavin Free shows up.

Michael Jones has a ritual on Monday mornings. His alarm clock is set for an hour later than every other day, and he spends five minutes lying in bed after he’s turned it off, glancing at a couple of his favourite websites on his phone. When he does get up, he takes a six minute shower – twice as long as he normally spares – and takes the time to dry his curls properly, with a hair dryer instead of a frantic rub of a towel. He eats two slices of toast – one peanut butter, one honey – and drinks his coffee out of a mug with a handle instead of a lid.

He dresses in a button-down shirt without a tie, and suit pants that he meticulously ironed the night before. He even tucks his shirt in, and spends more than a second looking at himself in the mirror to check his collar and cuffs. He replaces his glasses with contact lenses, hitches his suit jacket over his shoulder, and locks himself out of his apartment before shoving his keys into his pocket and sauntering down the four flights of stairs in his building. When he gets into his car, he blasts his music through the speakers, and drives to work feeling great.

His friends hate the end of the weekend, having to get up and go back to their nine-to-fives, but not him. Michael Jones loves Mondays.

He arrives in the parking lot of the Offices – _Rooster Teeth_ , officially your typical desk-job building that no one in Austin gives a second glance or thought to, but unofficially part of the political assassination scene for the CIA – at about nine in the morning. It feels a bit like a little holiday every time.

Michael waves to Kara at the front desk when he arrives. Her eyes flick over his face and body, and he can see her calculating, checking his stance and the lines of his clothes, assuring herself it is indeed him and not someone masquerading as him. He knows there’s also about ten video cameras in the room trained on him with a backup team rechecking, but he also knows Kara has never been wrong. Satisfied, she gives him the ‘go ahead’ nod, and he strolls through the halls, swiping his ID card as he goes, until he arrives at the Achievement Hunter office and casually walks on in there, too.

As with every Monday morning, the whole crew is already there at their desks, typing up reports or scanning photos or videos on their screens for a scrap of information, or whatever it is they’re working on right now. He steps up beside Geoff and holds out his hand while he glances at everyone else, waiting for the manila folder of files and information he’s come to expect on a Monday morning, and –

The manila folder doesn’t land into his hand. Geoff isn’t holding one. He’s not even looking at Michael but rather at his own computer, chin propped up on one hand while his eyes scan over a photo on the screen. The shadows of the photo don’t match the time on the EXIF data, Michael notices, but Geoff will be picking something else apart, like the brand of clothes people are wearing or the colour of the reflections on glass.

Michael clears his throat. “Uh, boss? Got anything for me?”

Geoff doesn’t look up, but he does flap his free hand at him. “Not today, Michael,” he says. “We’ve got a new kid coming in today. He’s bringing in our next case.”

“Well, where is he?”

“He’ll be here. I’m expecting him at about nine.”

Michael glances at his watch, and it reads 9:08. His mood sours instantly, and he clenches his teeth and sits down heavily at his own desk with a huff. “ _Fuck me_ ,” he mutters angrily.

So it turns out, Michael Jones _usually_ loves Mondays.

A usual Monday for Michael would, at this point, see him taking his files and flicking through them, following up on important points and small details on any of the dozens of digital databases his clearance level gives him. Michael takes notes in the margins of the pages, circling things with red felt-tips and taking more notes on post-its and on the manila folder itself. He might ask Jack or Geoff for advice on one point or another. Then he has the stupid parts, too, like how he brings coffee and lunch back to his desk, throws balled up pieces of paper at Ryan while he eats, and without fail, takes a wager with Ray about how long this case will take them to solve.

Today, he can’t do any of that. He takes the time to sulkily sort out a few loose ends from their last case – Burnie wants more information on the flasks the last target had been carrying on his belt, and Michael had gotten up close and personal when he’d found himself having to get out of a chokehold and had somehow ended up with his face pressed against the flasks. He answers a few emails. But when he’s finished all of that only twenty minutes have passed and this new guy still hasn’t arrived.

Michael sighs furiously and whirls his chair around to glare at Geoff. “When is this guy _getting here_?” he demands. Geoff shrugs, still looking at his computer.

“He’ll be here. It’s fine.”

“It’s fucking _rude_ , is what it is,” Michael shoots back, and crosses his arms to glare at the door.

Another fifteen minutes go by, and finally the door is flung open. A lanky, wild-haired guy in jeans and a t-shirt walks in, bag slung carelessly over his shoulder. And Michael has every intention of standing up and giving this guy a piece of his mind, because how _dare he_ fuck up Michael’s Monday like this, honestly, _how dare he_? But the second this new kid steps into the room, closing the door behind him, all the air is sucked from Michael’s lungs, his limbs seize up, and the words get stuck in his throat.

 

* * *

 

When Michael is three, his parents’ friends compliment them on what a well-behaved child he is, all quiet smiles and wide innocent eyes. And his parents laugh and thank them, because Michael has always been well-behaved, the terrible-twos just never happened, he’s far easier to handle than any of his older brothers ever were.

When Michael is seven, his parents sit him down and ask if he’s being bullied, because Michael never seems to have any friends wanting to come over to visit, and he never asks to go to a friend’s house, and they’re worried. But seven-year-old Michael says he’s not, and doesn’t tell them it’s because he doesn’t have any friends, that everyone avoids him because he doesn’t speak and nothing ever seems to bother him. He’s not even worth the sport.

At ten, Michael starts to think something is wrong with him. The other kids seem to wear all their emotions on their sleeves, but Michael just doesn’t express it. For awhile he thinks maybe he doesn’t feel emotions, and that scares him, but then he realises that _scares him_ and the other kids being sad makes him _worry_ and his brothers fighting makes him _angry_ , but he just doesn’t show it. He figures out soon after that that if the other kids come near him when they’re showing their emotions, they calm down. Tears stop, faces pale from red rage, and grins and laughter dull. Michael is pretty sure something is wrong with him.

One day after school when he’s eleven, walking home through the park, Michael comes across a man standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring into the sky and trembling. Everyone skirts around him, eyes down, but Michael walks up to him, worried. “Hey, are you alright?” Michael asks, reaching out. The second his fingers touch the man’s arm the man shudders and blinks and stares down at him.

“Kid,” the man says, and Michael is glad the guy is okay, but he looks scared. “You...” Michael’s fingers feel like they’re covered in little electric sparks. The man crouches down and looks Michael right in the eye. “You’re special, kid. Don’t you ever do that again. You keep your head down and just walk around us Sentinels, because one day one might hurt you.” And then he leaves, and Michael gets home confused because nothing that man said made sense, and he hadn’t even said thank you.

Then, the summer when Michael is thirteen, his parents let him stay up late watching movies. He’s flicking through channels when he pauses on a documentary. A woman is talking. “It was the doctors who figured it out,” she says. “I felt emotion, happiness, anger, sadness, but I just didn’t ever show it. And people around me would calm down, too.” Michael’s finger, hovering above the channel button on the remote, freezes.

“What happened when you were told?” the interviewer asks, and the camera pans out to show a second woman next to the first. Their hands reach out to entwine together, and they both smile.

“I was put in touch with some Sentinel services, and I went to meet some people. And that’s how I met my Sentinel.”

“You bonded?”

“Yes. Now I go where she goes. Sentinels provide such an important service to this country, and it’s my duty to keep her safe, to stop her getting lost in her senses.”

This is how Michael discovers that he’s a Guide, one of a rare group of people who are drawn to people with extremely heightened senses, Sentinels, and that he has the ability to ground these people when their senses overwhelm them. Michael spends days researching, watching interviews and reading books at the library, and he finds out that Sentinels almost always work for the military or law enforcement where their senses are most useful, and Guides invariably follow them when they’re bonded. It’s never the other way around.

Michael decides he doesn’t want to be a Guide. He doesn’t want to be tethered to someone for the rest of his life, going where he’s told because he has to. No, _he_ is going to be the important one, heightened senses be damned, and no one, _no one_ , is ever going to find out. The first strong emotion he feels in all of this is anger – he thinks of how he’s seen people show anger before, he can pretend to show that, too, so when Michael starts at high school, he does. He’s loud and furious and he swears when he’s frustrated, and he thinks it will keep people away. But the other students find it hilarious, and suddenly Michael has more friends than he knows what to do with.

By the time Michael is sixteen, he’s been acting out his anger at being a Guide for so long that it no longer feels like an act. He forgets how to be anything else.

 

* * *

 

There’s a lot that his fellow Hunters don’t know about Michael, and there’s plenty that he doesn’t know about them in return. In this line of work, not knowing is the safest option – they know what they have to so they can do their jobs, and that’s it. Michael has never told anyone about being a Guide – not Geoff, not the big bosses of Rooster Teeth, Burnie and Matt, _not a single damn person_ – because he doesn’t want to lose his job and, honestly, it’s never come up before. Until right now.

The man who just barged into the office is a Sentinel.

Michael watches this new guy tense, very slightly, and flick his eyes around the room to rest briefly on everyone, confused. _Oh, fuck_ , Michael thinks, because this guy is an _unbonded_ Sentinel, and he knows there’s a Guide in here, can feel his presence as keenly as Michael can feel that he’s a Sentinel. All Michael is sure of is that he absolutely cannot be found out, not now, not like this after everything he’s done to get here, because Michael works alone and the absolute _last_ thing he wants is to be bonded to this guy who can’t even arrive on time, and to have to spend his life with him, watching him, guiding him.

Thank Christ for Geoff, who climbs out of his chair and distracts everyone. “Guys,” he says, “This is Gavin Free.” Michael catches the hesitation in the new guy before he pulls Geoff into a hug and clearly relaxes as skin brushes skin and he can feel that Geoff isn’t the secret Guide. Then they’re pulling away and asking how the other has been, words and body language easy and relaxed, and Michael realises that this Gavin is the new guy to everyone but Geoff.

Gavin turns to the office and gives a little wave. “Hi,” he says, and Michael blinks. _Fucking hell, he’s British? What the fuck is he doing here?_

Geoff answers that, as though Michael had spoken aloud. “Gavin is from MI6. He’s worked with Rooster Teeth a few times in the past, but he’s here now on a more permanent basis. He’s also bringing in our next few jobs. Favour to the Brits and all.”

Michael is the only one other than Geoff within reach, and Gavin holds out his hand as an offer to shake. “Pleasure to meet you, lads.”

Michael covers his complete unwillingness for any skin-to-skin contact with this Sentinel by crossing his arms, hands clenched. He can feel his heart pounding, feel his breath coming in shorter bursts and he _knows_ Gavin can sense that, so he focuses on his anger to cover that. “Glad you could _finally_ make it, _Gavin_ ,” he snarls. “Nice and on time, that’s just _excellent_.” Gavin’s pupils dilate and his nostrils flare, and Michael can see him trying to figure him out, but the anger must cover his fear enough and Gavin eventually just shrugs and drops his hand.

“That’s Michael,” Geoff says, frowning. “He’s our resident hot-headed mess, and he will get the fuck over himself.” Michael flips him the bird and sulks even harder as the introductions get passed around the room. It’s nearly 10:30 when they _finally_ get to business.

Gavin reaches into his bag and pulls out a stack of folders with plastic covers, and hands them out. Michael is very careful to snatch his without any brush of skin against skin, and flips it open. He’s going to need to start wearing gloves to work, he decides absently.

“Everett Bishop,” Gavin tells them, opening his own folder to the first page where the target’s photo and basic information is shown. “He’s ex-GCHQ, signals intelligence. It’s rather embarrassing, I’m sure you can guess, but we’ve lost him on U.S. soil. We think he’s on the way to Costa Rica, and we’d very much like to stop him before that happens.”

“Costa Rica doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.K.,” Jack supplies to the room, and Gavin nods.

Ray frowns. “Why come to us? Don’t you want him _caught_?”

Gavin shakes his head. “No. He has...sensitive information.”

“Don’t they all?” Ray asks, and Gavin actually laughs. The smile he gives Ray seems genuine and warm. Michael hates him.

“Why are we _all_ working on this one guy?” he demands. Gavin flicks his eyes to him, but Jack is the one to offer the explanation again.

“MI6 _and_ the CIA have prioritised this case. You know better than to ask why. We do as we’re told.” Michael rolls his eyes, but he pulls his post-it notes over and starts jotting down information.

“Bishop has had only basic formal weapons training,” Gavin adds, “but he’s responsible for the deaths of two agents in England. We don’t want any more casualties. He’s only going to lay low for a few days before he tries to cross for Mexico, so, timeframe is short. I’d like to report his death to Her Majesty by next Monday morning.”

“Game fucking on,” Michael says, and turns his back to the room to get started. He ignores the chatter behind him, burying himself in the folder and the MI6 files he finds he’s been given clearance for, and finally it’s turning into a usual Monday. He jots down notes, thinks of a few places that suit Bishop’s style for potential hideouts, and starts looking into them. It’s going pretty well, right up until the moment that Gavin sits down at the free desk next to him.

“What the fuck do you want?” he growls, glaring sidelong. Gavin blinks and then smiles a stupid smile. Michael wants to punch it right off his fucking face.

“I need to get reacquainted with your systems here,” Gavin answers, gesturing at the computer. “For now, I’m being teamed with Ryan,” _Ryan, the Communications Guy_ , “so if I want to keep your mingy butts safe out there, I have to work here.”

Michael huffs. “Just keep it down,” he mutters.

“You want to work together?” Gavin asks, and he sounds like a child with his pathetic hope and excited bouncing in his chair.

“I work alone,” Michael grits out between teeth, and tries to go back to work. But Michael has never spent this long in the presence of a Sentinel before, and he’s quickly finding out that being so close is making his own senses go nuts, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to focus.

Usually on a Monday, Michael leaves just the tiniest bit early, and is the first out of the office. Today, even stretched as thin and feeling as angry and frustrated as he does, Michael knows that the second he leaves that room, Gavin will sense the Guide is missing, and he’ll know. So at six, when Geoff stands up and says, “Okay, get your assholes out of here and get some rest,” Michael stands up with the rest of them, gathering his things and shoving his folder of files roughly into his bag and shoving his chair back.

He leaves at the same time as everyone else, and they only part when they get to their cars. Michael is pretty sure he’s gotten away with it.

It’s not possible to work from home on his own PC, but once he shuts his apartment door behind himself he figures he wouldn’t be able to manage even if it was possible. His head is swirling with thoughts of Gavin, he’s freaking out a little – Gavin is a Sentinel, Michael is a Guide, he’s going to get caught and he’s _terrified_.

They need to kill Everett Bishop. Once they do that, Gavin will leave.

* * *

 

Michael has worked with the Hunters for long enough to have figured out their routine, so the next morning he times his arrival perfectly and walks into the office with Ryan, Jack and Ray. Gavin and Geoff are already there, and Michael watches as Gavin’s spine stiffens to match Michael’s tingling skin. Gavin’s lip twitches as he looks at them all, and Michael can’t tell if it’s holding back a smile or a frustrated frown.

He knows he hadn’t paid much attention to people’s behaviour around Gavin yesterday, too concerned with making himself less of a target, but it’s suddenly too fucking strange because everyone is tripping over themselves to help Gavin, to please Gavin, to make Gavin praise them or thank them. This British asshole has swanned in here – _late_ , Michael reminds himself, _he was so late yesterday_ – and he’s instantly friends with everyone.

Michael understands from brief chit-chat with Jack this morning that Gavin knew Geoff from some small jobs a few years ago, that he’d met Burnie and Matt, and even Gus and Joel. But Michael has worked so fucking hard for this job and he’s worked so hard for the respect of this team, he’s _still_ working for it, and Gavin just slots in perfectly like he’s always been here.

Michael tries to put it out of his mind and concentrate on work, he really does, burying himself in notes and surveillance footage, but Gavin’s presence – the presence of a Sentinel just _itching to be bonded_ – is distracting. And worse, Michael can see that Gavin is slowly falling under the same strain. Every now and then he cocks his head as though listening to something far away, or his eyes widen, or the hairs on his arms stand on end, and he loses himself in one of his senses for a few seconds until he physically shakes himself out of it.

Jack notices something is happening, too, it would be nearly impossible not to. He makes it a joke, and it spreads around the room like flashfire – Gavin is scatterbrained, Jack tells them, and Ryan jumps on board joking that he doesn’t know how Gavin has survived in this field for so long, and Geoff fondly calls him dumb as dicks. Gavin just eats it up. Hell, Gavin _encourages_ it, goes out of his way to trip over things or run into desk corners or get lost halfway through a sentence with words that don’t make sense. Everyone falls for it, everyone except for Michael, who drives himself further into loathing as the day goes on.

And then he sees Gavin touch Ray. It’s fleeting, barely a touch at all, a brief scrape of fingers against ear as Gavin leans over from his position resting on Ray’s chair back, pointing at something on the computer screen. But Michael sees that relief soften the lines of Gavin’s body, before he glances around the room again. The son of a bitch is _hunting for him_. Michael tugs his leather gloves on harder, just to reassure himself that they’re still there and he definitely brought them in today, and tries to ignore the gnawing fear in his belly.

The whole room bursts into activity when Ray pulls off headphones and says, “Fucking got him!” Bishop is still somewhere on the East Coast, and tensions are high when Geoff and Gavin set them to scouring the coast state by state. At this point in a mission, they sacrifice going home for the immediate need of discovery – they’re not getting home until Bishop is found and eliminated.

Michael takes two hours sleep at three in the morning on Wednesday, slumped over his desk. He never sees Gavin take a break or sleep, but he does see him slowly fall into his trances more often as he sits in front of a computer of his own, eyes flicking wildly. Michael knows he’s picking over each and every pixel, separating every single background noise from the foreground and processing them and their importance. Stuff that Michael can do, too, provided he has time and the right technology, he thinks a little bitterly.

When Michael goes to sleep on Thursday night, they’ve managed to track Bishop’s movements to somewhere in Connecticut. The alarm wakes him four hours later, and he jolts up from where he’d been sleeping on the couch in the corner. Gavin is grinning wildly, and Geoff is giving orders. “We’ve fucking found him,” Geoff says, taking one look at Michael with his curls everywhere from sleep. “How do you want this done?” he asks Gavin.

“MI6 doesn’t give a toss, but I think a quick long-range snipe should do it,” Gavin replies, and Ray instantly stands up. “As long as we make it look like it wasn’t actually a bullet.” Ray promptly sits back down, and Geoff whirls to Michael and points at him.

“You. Suit up, you’re going in.”

There’s no time to waste. Michael instantly drops all thoughts of Gavin and Sentinels and fear, and loses himself to the job. He whoops and dives underneath his desk, pulling his field uniform out along with his sniper case.

“Bishop has left the East Coast,” Geoff tells him. “We got a visual on him crossing the Nebraska-Colorado border, and we have satellite eyes on him now." Michael kicks off his wrinkled suit pants and pulls his shirt over his head to replace it with his skin-tight reinforced body armour.

Michael carefully changes into his uniform gloves before accepting the pistol thigh-holster Gavin is holding out to him. "Looks like he's heading to Utah on the I-70, and you're going to intercept him on a stretch there," Gavin tells him. Michael nods.

"Chopper is ready to go," Ryan says, finger to his earpiece. Michael pulls off his glasses and replaces them with his spare contact lenses. He takes the earpiece Ryan is holding out to him and shoves it in his ear.

"Ready to go, boss," he tells Geoff.

"Driver's ready, get out there," Geoff instructs, and Michael takes his sniper case and goes, long strides and steady gaze getting everyone in the corridors out of his way. The SUV reserved for these moments is waiting in the parking lot, and Michael climbs in.

"Leaving now, boss," he says, pressing the transmission button on his earpiece as the car leaves, heading for their private section of the airport. The chopper is waiting, and Michael and the pilot flash each other their credentials before he climbs in and straps himself into his seat.

They're comfortably in the air when the pilot yells back at him, "40 minutes to location." Michael nods at her and relays that back to the office.

Geoff's voice reappears in his ear. "You're heading to the Wasatch Plateau for the intercept," he tells Michael. "Sunrise is at 6:42 this morning, expected intercept time at 7."

"Got it," Michael responds. "Anything else I should know?"

"Just remember to make it look an accident," and suddenly it's Gavin's voice, breathless and strange. Michael shivers, and feels the pull of a Sentinel even from this distance.

"Yeah, will do," he chokes out, and sits back in his seat. Then for the next thirty minutes, there's nothing, just Michael and the pilot updating him on their status, until the chopper slows and descends into dark ground about a mile and a half from the road. Michael grabs his things and jumps out, and waits for the chopper to lift off and the roar of the rotors to die away as it leaves before heading to the road over sandy, rocky ground.

It takes about fifteen minutes for Michael to find a good spot about one hundred yards from the highway. He can see a good stretch of road on either side, and figures this is as good a place as any.

"At intercept point, boss," he says to his earpiece.

"Yep," is all he gets back, so he starts setting up. It's not the first time he's ever had to set up his sniper rifle in the dark, and it sure as shit won't be the last, but at this point it's muscle memory and he gets it done quickly. More than once, Michael is glad for his gloves - it's dropped to about 40 degrees in the early morning, and Michael needs every single movement to be perfectly precise, he can't risk shivering when the smallest tremor will ruin his shot.

Every few minutes he scans his surroundings again and does some light muscle stretches. Every now and then he walks around and does some harder stretches, just to keep himself warm and limber. Then, just before 6:30, Ryan's voice crackles in his ear. "Target is approaching, 25 minutes out."

“Got it,” Michael responds, and he gets himself into position, lying down in the dirt and correcting his cheek piece. He scans the road with just his eyes, not shifting his face, and he can see clearly the curve of the road that Bishop will drive around. “Ready, boss.”

It’s Gavin that responds again, and Michael thanks any higher power that’s listening that he’s been through so much training at this point that his body doesn’t shift in response, even though his mind jumps. “Michael,” Gavin says through the earpiece. “I’ll be running the op from this point out.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Michael growls.

“Target is approaching at 75 miles an hour. Stand by.” Michael does. This is his favourite part, waiting for the target and doing quick math to determine his exact shooting point, adrenalin starting to rush through his body and needing to mentally stamp down the way his body automatically wants to respond to it.

“Target is five miles out,” he eventually hears. He wants to grin, but resists. “Two miles.”

“Road conditions?” Michael asks.

“Clear on either side.” A few moments pause, then, “One mile.”

“Waiting for the order,” Michael says back, and he can almost feel the anticipation of the office back home through the silence in his ear. He can hear a car approaching, now. “Gavin?” The car comes round the bend, and Michael is suddenly worried. He has one chance, but can’t act without the order, not again, not after the last time. “ _Gavin._ ”

“Take the shot,” he finally hears.

Michael breathes out, waits for the car to hit the right spot on the road and for his heart to pause between beats.

He fires.

The car swerves off the road and slams into an embankment, and comes to a dead stop. Michael jumps up, leaps over his sniper on its frame, and runs towards the car. “Roads?” he asks again, skipping over some rocks only just visible in the new morning light.

“Still clear. You’ve got time.”

His feet hit the tarmac and he jogs across to the car. The front is crumpled, and there is a bullet hole in each front window, and Michael can see Bishop slumped over the steering wheel, completely still.

He opens the driver side door and pauses. There’s no need to conceal the bullet wound, Michael thinks grimly. He’d thought he’d have to do some more damage – the reason Ray had opted out, since he had no stomach for such things – but momentum has dealt with that for him. He still reaches under Bishop’s chin to press fingers to his pulse point, but there’s nothing to feel. He shuts the door again and un-holsters his pistol. With one well-placed arm, he uses the butt of the pistol to smash the door window, then walks to the front and smashes the windscreen, and then once more for the passenger window. There’s no point in looking for the bullet itself – like as not it’s buried in a tree a few hundred miles from here.

Michael steps back and examines the scene. It’s messy, but car accidents are. He’s pretty certain that’s a pass. He reaches up to his ear. “Target eliminated.”

He actually hears a whoosh of air escape Gavin’s lungs through his earpiece. “Bloody good job, Michael. Return to entry point for extraction. See you soon.”

The link goes dead and Michael heads back to his sniper rifle to pack it away back into its case before trekking back to where he arrived. The chopper comes down soon after he shows up, and Michael enjoys a talking-free trip back to Austin-Bergstrom, where the driver and the SUV are waiting for him to pick him up.

By the time he arrives back at the office, the sun is high in the sky, and Michael is a little giddy with a job well done. Geoff claps him on the back and says, “Well done,” and for Michael, really, that’s praise enough.

Jack congratulates him, and Ray slings an arm around his shoulders and keeps it there for the entire time Michael describes his actions to the room. Ryan grins and says he approves, both of what went down and Michael’s back up plan should he have needed to take action, and that’s a pretty high commendation from the guy, because Ryan was _so good at his job_ before he was moved to communications.

Gavin is standing just on the sidelines, looking like he feels decidedly out of place, and Michael selfishly thinks, _Good,_ before Geoff jerks a thumb at him. “You should’ve seen Gavvers, though, Michael.” Michael frowns up at Geoff, confused. “Kid got real fucking quiet when you left,” and Geoff is laughing, now. “Worrying over nothing. Told you he’d do fine,” he finishes, looking at Gavin.

Michael’s blood runs cold and he turns to stare at Gavin, who is chewing on his lower lip. _Fuck_ , Michael thinks, _Fuck, I fucked up_. Because he’d gone on this mission alone, he’d left the office _alone_. Michael is frozen in place when Gavin shrugs and makes his way over.

“You did, Geoff. You did.” He looks Michael right in the eye and holds out another plastic-covered file. Still gloved, Michael reaches out with trembling fingers and accepts it. “You did good work today, Michael,” Gavin says, and he sounds a little breathless. Michael watches Gavin’s eyes roam over his face before flicking down to his gloves and back up again. His face softens into a smile full of sudden understanding, and Michael’s heart leaps into his throat. “We need your written report, in that,” Gavin adds, pointing to the file, eyes never leaving Michael’s. “Go home. Get some rest. See you tomorrow.”

Gavin turns away to talk to Geoff, but his voice had been filled with a promise and Michael suddenly can’t breathe, he needs to go, needs to get out of here. He stutters excuses to everyone and shrugs Ray off, can’t even manage to say goodbye before he’s gone out of the door and out of the offices into the parking lot. He sags against his car, gulping in air. Everything is ruined.

Four days. That’s how long it had taken. Just _four fucking days_ , and Gavin knows. He knows.

Somehow, Michael gets home without having a car accident of his own. Somehow he writes his report. Somehow he eats...something, Michael isn’t sure what. His one distinct moment of the day is suddenly screaming in the bathroom and sobbing on the shower floor under the hot spray of the water. Michael is certain that he’ll never get to sleep that night, but his days have been long and today particularly has been exhausting, both mentally and physically, and somehow that overrides his blurring mind when he curls up on the couch at three in the afternoon and sleeps.


	2. With Everything Falling Down Around Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the other side of that door, Gavin is waiting. Gavin, the Sentinel. Gavin, the Sentinel, who knows, who had promised that he’d see him tomorrow, who is going to talk to him about it, somehow, eventually.

Michael’s phone alarm goes off the same time it had on Monday, and Michael has to peel his face from the couch to rummage around under the cushions for it. He lurches to his feet and stumbles to the bathroom, pointedly ignoring the shower where he remembers breaking down, and heading straight for the basin where he scrubs his face with cold water. The curls over his forehead drip and he doesn’t bother to dry them.

He pours his coffee into a cup with a lid and doesn’t make breakfast at all. He dresses in a crumpled shirt and unironed pants, and only puts on suit shoes because they’re the closest thing to him when he sits down on his bed to pull on socks. He nearly forgets his keys when he goes to leave his apartment, and then halfway to the car realises he did forget his coffee, but can’t find the energy to go back up four flights of stairs to get it. He drives to work in silence and pulls up into his car space in a lot already full.

He doesn’t wave to Kara while she checks him, doesn’t even smile. Each and every swipe of his ID card along the halls fills him with more anxiety until he reaches the Achievement Hunter office and stops outside.

On the other side of that door, Gavin is waiting. Gavin, the Sentinel. Gavin, the Sentinel, who _knows_ , who had promised that he’d see him tomorrow, who is going to talk to him about it, somehow, eventually. Michael doesn’t want this, he never wanted any of this. He just wanted to help, to serve his country, and to live his life as _his own life_ , not as one bound to someone else, and especially not to anyone like Gavin. Just the thought of going in there fills Michael with such terror that he almost turns around and goes back home.

He’ll never figure out just how he manages to open the door and step inside over an hour and a half after he should have arrived.

Heads whip around to stare at him, and eyes drag over his wrecked face and his rumpled outfit. Michael barely notices them, only catches Geoff’s disapproving frown on the edge of his vision. No, Michael has eyes only for Gavin, whose body stiffens when Michael enters, and who turns to show his face as it goes through an impressively fast flicker of dismay, concern and frustration before it hardens and he stands up from his chair next to Michael’s desk.

“Michael,” Gavin says, and Michael feels his skin prickle and his hands shake. His eyes drop to the floor, because he can’t look at him anymore, not now, not when Gavin is about to tell the whole damn office. “Come with me.”

And that’s a damn surprise, Michael thinks when he looks back up sharply and Geoff is nodding quietly in approval, but he knows this has nothing to do with tardiness or dishevelled clothes or unprofessional appearances. Gavin moves past him to go out into the hall. _Forgot my gloves_ , Michael thinks suddenly when Gavin’s hand accidentally brushes his and the silent invisible crackle of electricity dances between their skin.

Trembling, Michael follows Gavin down the hall and around corners until Gavin leads him into an empty conference room and says gently, “Close the door.” Michael does it without argument, because if he can prevent people hearing this, he’ll do nearly anything. When he looks back up to Gavin, he’s surprised to see he’s all the way against the other wall, hands wringing in front of him, looking about as uncomfortable as Michael feels.

There’s a long, awkward silence until Michael gathers his thoughts together. He’s angry, he reminds himself, he’s been angry since he was thirteen and he knows how to act like it. “Well?” he asks. “Hurry the fuck up. What do you want to say to me?”

Gavin looks up in surprise, and his eyes flick over him in all the places Michael knows he’s examining for body language. There, his chest for heart and respiration rate; there, his nose for the flared nostrils Michael practiced for weeks until it looked natural, and his eyes for the dilated pupils Michael can’t control; there, his hands clenched and knuckles white, but shaking. And then, of all things, Gavin relaxes, and smiles, and Michael just doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Look,” Gavin says softly. “It was a bloody surprise to me, too, walking in here on Monday. Must have been a right shock for you. And I don’t know what you’ve heard about Sentinels, if you’ve heard anything much at all, but...” Gavin takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to bond with you. I’m not looking for a Guide, not right now anyway, and even if I was I wouldn’t force you into something you clearly don’t want.”

And that’s so far out of left field Michael doesn’t know how to respond, not really, so in desperation he snaps, “What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t understand your bullshit. Are you going to yell at me for being late or what? Fucking hell, just get to it.”

Gavin laughs. He actually _laughs_ , and that makes Michael furious. He latches to that. “Don’t be a tosspot, Michael. I know you’re a Guide.”

“You don’t know _shit_ ,” Michael growls.

“I didn’t,” Gavin admits, shrugging. “You did a bloody good job of hiding it. Honestly, I’m impressed, you had me in a right bugger’s muddle trying to find you. Stupidly obvious when you left yesterday, though.” Gavin smiles, and Michael hates him, hates him with a furious passion. “But I thought, maybe we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot because of that? Maybe we could talk, get it all out there. Want to be friends, Michael?” It’s _pathetic_ , Michael says to himself, and he loses it.

Michael doesn’t think, he just stalks towards Gavin and shoves him hard up against the wall, fingers clenched in his shirt. Gavin squawks in surprise, eyes wide, and Michael leans in close. “Shut the fuck up,” he hisses. “You shut the fuck up _right now_. No, I don’t want to _be friends_ , especially not with you. I don’t want to _talk to you,_ I am barely tolerating _working with you_.”

“Aw, Michael,” Gavin starts, until Michael shoves him again and he yelps in pain.

“I don’t give a shit what you do or don’t want. Your bullshit friendly innocent act might work on all the others, but it doesn’t work on me.” Cards on the table, now. “You want to ‘get it all out there’? I _hate you_. You swan in here and take over, not a damn care in the world, and you want to _be friends_? Go fuck yourself.” Michael leans in even closer, so close that he can see the beads of sweat in Gavin’s hairline and feel his breath coming in short sharp bursts while his eyes flick down to Michael’s lips and back up to his eyes again.

“And one more thing,” Michael growls lowly. “I swear to Christ, if you tell even a single fucking person anything about this, if I hear even a goddamn _whisper_ of the word ‘Guide’ again, I will tell them about _you_.” Gavin swallows. “And I know you don’t want them to know you’re a Sentinel, or you’d have told them yourself the second you walked in here. You’d have been openly using your fucking senses to help us. So you keep your mouth shut, shove it all up your ass, and leave me the fuck alone.”

Michael releases him then, and steps back, turning on his heel and heading for the door. “Michael,” he hears behind him, and he freezes to look back over his shoulder. Gavin, unsurprisingly, is smiling as he smoothes down his clothes and puts himself back together. “Geoff’ll have my knob if I don’t say anything about this,” Gavin says, waving his hand to indicate Michael’s appearance. “Don’t be late again, yeah?”

“Oh, that’s fucking rich,” Michael snaps back, and storms out. He can hear Gavin’s huffed laughter following him all the way back to the Achievement Hunter office.

Michael stomps back into the office and throws himself heavily into his desk chair, ignoring Ray’s concerned glance and Jack’s frown. Gavin walks in after him and carefully closes the door, leaning back against it. His fingers are trembling slightly, and Michael can only hope Gavin feels as wrung out as he does.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” Geoff says, and Michael flips him off, “we have a new job. Gavin?”

Gavin takes a deep breath, and Michael watches as it steadies him completely. He moves to his bag and pulls out a new pile of plastic-covered files and starts handing them out. “Our new target is Connel Wilson, from Defence Intelligence.” Michael snatches his file from Gavin’s hands and resolutely ignores the twitch of Gavin’s lips upwards.

“What’s he doing here?” Ray asks as he flicks through the papers in his file.

“D.I. sent him here,” Gavin tells him. “MI6 were told he was here for a long-term analysis of something, but we weren’t given details. All we know is that he’s here, and he’s not going anywhere for awhile, but we don’t know his exact location.”

Ryan hums thoughtfully. “Says here he’s dangerous?”

“Ah, yeah.” Gavin rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “My mate Dan and him went through some specialised weapons training together.”

“Wait, you know this guy personally?” Geoff asks. Gavin freezes.

“We’ve met,” he says shortly.

“Is that going to be an issue for you?”

Gavin turns and looks him dead in the eye. “Absolutely not.” And Michael can’t help but shudder and wonder what this Connel Wilson did for Gavin – takes everything as a goddamn joke Gavin – to use such a cold voice, to sound like he actually _wants_ him dead. In the back of his mind, Michael catches himself thinking that he hopes he’s never on the receiving end of that voice.

“But yeah, he’s bloody dangerous,” Gavin adds, back to normal and addressing everyone again in a heartbeat.

That’s when Geoff takes over, organising everyone into combing every database, every scrap of information they can find in an area of the U.S. Michael scowls when he’s given the Northeast. “You’re from Jersey, right?” Geoff asks, but ignores his protests about Ray being from New York, so Michael slams his headphones on and, furious, gets to work.

It’s slow for him. He decides to start with New Jersey to get it over and done with, and desperately tries to not think about living there, growing up in that town, walking on those streets, sitting alone at that school. He doesn’t eat lunch, and only looks up when his stomach growls so loudly it cuts through his headphones and the music he’s playing as he’s finishing up with the next database. He glances around the room, but the office is empty except for him and Geoff. Michael sighs and checks his watch, stretches, and starts packing up, shoving files and notes into his bag.

“You alright, kid?” Geoff asks, still looking at his own computer.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Michael answers, but he’s not. He’s wrung out and tired and over it. “I’m fucking fabulous.”

Geoff turns around then, eyebrow raised. Michael swings his back over his shoulder. “You don’t like Gavin.” It’s not a question.

“Nope,” Michael answers, popping the p.

“Is it going to cause any more problems?”

Michael seethes. “Are you going to ask _him_ the same thing?”

“No need, asshole,” Geoff tells him. “Gavin actually likes you. Don’t know why. You’re abrasive as dicks to him.”

Michael scoffs. “That’s because _Gavin_ is too fucking stupid to know better.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“He’s a hypocritical, arrogant dick,” Michael argues. “But no. It won’t cause any more problems. I honestly don’t plan to talk to him unless I absolutely need to.”

“Well, if that’s the best I can get from you...” Geoff says drily, and waves him away.

And despite all that happened the day before, and how miserable Michael had been that morning, and even how tired and done with all of this he feels, he gets home at least a little appeased. He’d expected an insistence of revealing that he was a Guide, had really thought Gavin would make him agree to a bond he didn’t want and would _never_ want. For that not to happen, or at least not yet, is a huge weight off him. So he cooks himself a proper dinner and watches Netflix for a few hours with a beer on the couch. He irons clothes for Monday, and goes to bed at a reasonable hour.

True to his word, when Michael arrives on Monday morning – a little earlier than his usual Mondays, because until Gavin is gone there won’t _be_ any usual Mondays – he doesn’t cause any problems. He listens to Gavin’s almost insignificant update from MI6 and then promptly ignores him. He doesn’t sneer when Gavin sits back down at the desk next to him. He doesn’t swear when Gavin jerks himself out of a trance and spills a glass of water across their desks. He doesn’t even yell when Gavin cleans it up and Michael feels the crackle of electricity over his skin when Gavin’s hand brushes his arm.

But it does get hard. Gavin seems to have flicked a switch in himself to ‘bumbling useless idiot’, and as the day wears on, Michael finds himself more and more frustrated and unable to concentrate. He’s getting nowhere, and it’s just as Gavin accidentally kicks Michael’s computer tower under the desks and Michael’s monitor switches off that his last shred of patience goes out the window.

Jack and Geoff are laughing, Gavin’s idiocy such a huge joke. Michael’s rage boils over and he takes his headphones off, a moment away from letting it all loose when Ray stands up and announces, “Lunch!” It shocks Michael to stillness. “You and me, Michael, let’s go.” And Ray literally pulls him out of his chair and out the door.

Michael is picking through his fries at the burger place Ray made him drive to when Ray says, “So, Gavin is pretty into you, huh?”

Michael chokes. “ _What?_ ” he manages to gasp out between coughs. “Where the fuck did you get _that_ idea?”

“He’s always looking at you, sneaking little glances and shit.” Ray shrugs.

Michael rolls his eyes. “That’s not why.”

“Hey man, no judgement,” Ray tells him, flicking a curly fry into Michael’s face. Michael scowls and throws it back. “But he’s also looking into space a lot, and then when he looks at you again, he smiles. So, you know.”

And that’s a bit of a surprise, Michael has to admit. But Gavin is a dumbass piece of shit, so who knows why he does anything. Probably just smug satisfaction in finding the Guide in the office, Michael decides. He doesn’t say any of this, _can’t_ say any of this, so all he says is, “Yeah, whatever.”

Ray grins. “I’d go there, if I was into it. And you look like you need a good--” Michael shuts him up with another fry to his face, but really he can’t be too mad at him, not after he got Michael out of the office at exactly the right moment.

So despite Ray’s complete and utter misunderstanding of the situation, Michael goes back much more relaxed. And that’s why he actually pays attention when Gavin hums in confusion and pushes his chair back from his desk.

“Hey Geoff! Look at this, Geoff.” Geoff turns around and scoots his chair over. “MI6 just sent me this photo of Con, but there’s no information. They don’t know where it’s from.”

Michael glances over and feels his blood run cold. “Fucking hell,” he says, and shoves his way over Gavin to take the mouse and zoom the photo out, ignoring Gavin’s squawk and the fizz of their skin together.

“Michael?” Geoff asks, and Michael jabs a finger on the screen, pointing at the building behind Wilson.

“That’s my fucking apartment!” he yells.

“ _What?_ ” Jack asks, jumping up to look.

“Right fucking there!” He points again to the building, at a window on the fifth floor. There’s a small potted cactus on the ledge, blurry but obvious – Michael hasn’t watered that cactus in weeks. “He’s outside my goddamn apartment building!”

Gavin squeaks softly, and when Michael turns to look at him, his face – too close – is deathly pale. “He’s here in Austin?” Gavin breathes, and Michael gets the sense that there is something far more dangerous about Wilson than Gavin had told them.

“Right,” Geoff says, and they all snap to attention. “Focus has changed. Eyes to Austin, boys, find him!”

Gavin is shaking, Michael notices, trembling like a goddamn leaf as they comb Austin for the smallest, most minute details. The mood is frantic, fingers clacking over keyboards and short, sharp updates on a trail coming from around the room.

“Spotted on Congress!”

“Moving north!”

“Outside Allandale!”

Then, finally, Ryan calls out, “Geoff! Live feed, security cam.” Everyone crowds Ryan’s computer and there he is, ducking into a warehouse just north of Allandale.

“You up for another?” Geoff asks Michael. Michael nods. “Good. Ray, Jack, you too.”

Michael doesn’t complain when Gavin starts helping him gear up. He’s pulling his field uniform on again while Gavin slots his pistol into its thigh holster and holds it out to him. “You any good with this, Michael?”

“He’s the best,” Jack says from where Ryan is helping him into his shoulder holsters while he’s screwing silencers onto his own pistols.

“Come on, man, I’m right here,” Ray shoots over his shoulder, slipping knives into pockets in his body armour while Geoff oversees.

“I’m alright,” Michael answers, trying not to feel too annoyed at Gavin’s half-doubtful face. He takes the holster and clips it into place on his belt and around his leg.

“I hope so...” Gavin murmurs, and steps back to let Ryan pass everyone earpieces. Geoff practically shoves them out the door the second they’re ready, and they stalk down the hall to the front. The driver pulls the SUV up and they climb in.

“Looks like the warehouse has two levels,” Geoff says through their earpieces as they’re driven through Austin. “You know the drill, boys. Clear out the bottom first, move up together. Got it?”

“Got it, boss,” Jack answers for them.

“Wilson is still inside,” Ryan tells them as they pull up a block from the building. “Windows look clear, can’t see any snipers.” They climb out of the SUV and jog towards the building, low to the ground, fingers holding their pistols steady as they go. “Still, eyes up.”

If they didn’t know Wilson was inside, Michael would have sworn the place was empty and completely abandoned. He and Ray flank Jack as he picks the padlocks on a side door, scanning the surrounds as he works.

Ray crouches low and Michael stands over him, their pistols up and ready while Jack stands aside to push the door open. They step inside and, practiced and fluid, swing right and left.

“Clear,” Ray murmurs.

“Clear,” Michael agrees.

“We’re in,” Jack relays back to the office. The warehouse is empty, the main floor only interrupted by a few chains and broken planks lying around.

There are a few rooms to the right of the main room on the first level, and the three of them move across to check them. They’re quiet but for gentle, deliberate footfalls and murmured clears through the earpieces as each room is checked and closed off.

“He’s definitely still in there,” Ryan says as they climb the stairs. Michael’s heart is in his throat, but as they clear the landing and move into the multitude of rooms on the second floor, no trap is sprung.

Michael finds his way into the room Wilson has clearly been staying in. A sleeping bag is on the floor with a couple of duffel bags, clothes strewn about. A desk in the corner has some candles laid out with a mess of papers. Michael checks under the desk and is ready to call the room clear when a piece of paper on the desk catches his eyes.

 _Con_ , it reads. _Gavvers has the CIA with him. They’re already onto Everett. Keep your head low. Gav won’t come for you himself, but he’ll send someone if you’re found. He won’t want them to know either, so he’s not sending them out to capture. Stay. Low. – T._

Michael picks it up and frowns. “Fucking hell, Gavin, what the fuck?” He folds the piece of paper roughly and shoves it against his hip under his belt. And of _course_ there’s more going on that Gavin isn’t telling them, of _course_ there is. Michael is furious.

“Clear,” he bites out, and leaves the room back to the second floor hall. And everything suddenly happens very quickly.

Ray is walking towards him, arms spread in confusion. “He’s not here,” he’s saying when movement from a doorway catches Michael’s eye. Wilson steps into the hall, a pistol of his own already up.

“Ray!” Michael yells as he swings his pistol to aim, and Ray whirls but Wilson gets two shots off before Michael’s bullet rips into him and he drops. Wilson’s gunshots are loud and much, much too close, echoing off walls while Ray grunts and staggers backwards, falling. His pistol slips from his hand and clatters to the floor, and Michael watches in horror as Ray’s back hits the ground and he lies still.

“ _Jack!_ ” Michael screams, running to Ray and dropping to his knees at his side. Jack tears out of a room, and Michael desperately presses his palms down over the two bullet wounds in Ray’s shoulder and chest, feels hot blood on his skin.

“Fuck!” Jack curses, and his hand shoots to his earpiece. “Ray is down! Ray’s been shot!” he yells.

“ _What?_ ” Geoff yells back through the earpiece.

There’s a couple of seconds where all Michael can feel is fear and rising horror, whispering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over while Jack hurries over to Ray’s other side.

“Ambulance on the way, handlers en route,” Ryan says, voice cracking. “Pulse?”

Jack drops to his knees as well and tears off his glove to press fingers to Ray’s temple, and then to his neck. There’s a tense moment before he answers, “Yes, just. Breathing laboured.”

It feels like an eternity with Michael stemming blood and Jack monitoring vitals before Michael hears approaching sirens, and even longer before they stop outside and paramedics and CIA handlers both storm in, pulling Michael away and taking over. Vaguely Michael recognises paramedics gathering up Wilson, but his eyes are only for Ray.

And then Burnie is there, demanding answers, and Michael is telling him what happened through numb lips, with trembling and red-coated hands, watching as Ray is strapped to a gurney and rushed away, a crowd of people furiously working to save his life.

Michael is still in a daze hours later, after he’s changed and washed his shaking hands, and after Burnie wraps up taking statements back at the offices and tells him Ray is out of surgery. Ryan drives Michael and Jack down to the hospital where armed guards check their ID before letting them into Ray’s room.

Tubes and wires are everywhere, and Ray looks so small and frail in amongst them, the beeping from monitors the only thing Michael can hear. Geoff is sat by Ray’s side, clenching Ray’s hand tightly in his, his face pale and weary.

“They think--” Geoff starts, but his voice catches and he has to clear his throat. “They think he’ll make it. They can’t tell me for certain, but they _think_. They fucking _think_.”

And Michael knows Geoff is blaming himself, because Ray is still a kid in so many ways, and Geoff never had to agree to recruit him, never had to train him for the field, never had to send him out on this mission today. And despite how little they know of each other outside of the job, they’re still family, the Achievement Hunters, and it’s as a family that they all take seats around Ray’s bed to wait there with him.

Gavin isn’t there. _Good_ , Michael thinks viciously, because through all of this, when the rest of his body was numb and he couldn’t feel anything else, the letter hidden against his hip has been silently burning his skin.


	3. Don't Mistake What You Have With What You Hate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is there anything else I need to know, Michael?”
> 
> Michael thinks about what will happen to him if Geoff ever learns that he’s a Guide, because Gavin is a Sentinel, and Gavin is useful, but Guides are only supposed to support Sentinels, they’re not supposed to be their own person. And Michael says, “No. There’s nothing else.”

The first few days after Ray’s surgery pass for Michael in a series of actions. He sits at home for awhile, trying to watch T.V. after Burnie calls and tells him the Achievement Hunters aren’t expected in. When he can’t focus on the T.V., Michael cleans. He throws away his cactus, browning and sunken, vacuums and dusts and even mops. He cooks, he eats, and he sleeps. He agrees to meet some friends for a beer while they’re passing through Austin, but decides it was a terrible idea when they realise he’s out of it.

“One of my co-workers is in hospital,” he tells them when they ask if he’s okay.

“Shit. Being an electrician must be dangerous,” one friend says. Michael just hums and agrees, and excuses himself to go home.

He visits the hospital daily. Every time he turns up, Geoff is at Ray’s bedside, holding his hand. And every day, Michael sees him look a little thinner, a little paler. Michael knows he’s eating because Michael himself is bringing him food, and Jack is doing the same. One day Michael arrives and Ryan is holding Ray’s hand instead, Geoff asleep in his chair.

“He wouldn’t sleep until I took over,” Ryan murmurs, jerking his head towards his fingers entwined with Ray’s limp ones, and Michael nods. That sounds like Geoff.

And through all of it – through walking in to Jack in the bathroom holding back tears, through Geoff screaming and cursing in the hospital parking lot until Michael can run over to gently lay a hand on his arm and calm him down, the only time he’s ever been glad to be a Guide – Michael feels the letter about Gavin weighing down his pocket.

Geoff is halfway through lunch with Michael more than a few days in when Ray’s hand twitches and his eyes open. Lunch is promptly forgotten as Geoff lunges forwards to squeeze Ray’s fingers. Ray looks around slowly, scared and confused, but the relief that floods Geoff’s face is hard for Michael to ignore.

“Christ Almighty, Ray,” Geoff sobs. Michael has never heard him this wrecked before. “It’s okay, bud, you’re okay. Jesus, you’re fired. Your dick is _so_ _fired_.” But he’s laughing and crying and Michael thinks they’re both going to be fine.

Michael himself is filled with relief as well, patting Ray’s hand before doctors come in and tell him to get out. But now that he’s pretty sure Ray will recover, and worry and fear can ease, he has space and energy left for rage. His hand slips into his pocket to curl around the crumpled letter.

What Michael has realised with this letter is that he knows virtually nothing about Gavin. He knows he’s British, from MI6, and that he’s worked with the CIA, and Rooster Teeth especially, sometime in the past. Obviously, he knows Gavin is a Sentinel. That’s not a lot. And sure, Michael thinks, he also knows very little about his actual co-workers – job requirement and all – but it’s a far sight better than that.

Here’s what Michael knows about the Achievement Hunters –

Geoff likes to talk about how he he’d been in the army. All very impressive stuff – rations and pranks and gunfire – and work that had lasted him years. Jack tells Michael one day that everything Geoff says is true, but what he leaves out is that he was just an army _photojournalist_. A damned good one, though, to hear Jack speak of it. Too good, it turns out, because he’d managed to get photos of some seriously classified stuff – Jack refuses to say what – and had hidden it away. It would have gone undiscovered, too, if his commanding officer hadn’t done a full search of quarters and confiscated them. Not long after, Burnie had approached him and given him a job collecting intelligence for the Rooster Teeth branch of the CIA.

Eventually, Geoff had become sick of the middleman. Why collect all the information and pass it on only for the response time to be too slow to really act on it? Why not just do it all yourself? Keep a constant information feed, take out the target faster. Somehow, and Geoff later tells Michael he has no idea how or why, Geoff had managed to convince Burnie. Better, he convinced Burnie to hire Jack.

Jack is difficult to figure out. He shrugs and says that he’s really not that special, and really has no skills to speak of. But when Michael asks Geoff, Geoff likes to tell him. Jack has known Geoff for years, it turns out. The exact phrase isn’t thrown about – in fact, Jack has glared a person down for saying it in front of him before, all beard and frosty silence – but Michael is pretty certain Jack used to be a hit man. It makes sense, Michael thinks, because Jack would get deployed into the field with Geoff’s voice in his ear keeping him updated. It’s a system that had worked for awhile before the demand for them had just gotten too high, and they had to hire Michael. He doesn’t know much about Jack at all, really, but rumour is he has a wife down in Sydney, Australia.

Ray is hired some time after Michael. He has I.T. training, though not much – certainly nothing college-level. Regardless, Geoff says he’s the best hacker he’s ever seen. Ray had been working in I.T. support in an office building in New York by day, and by night he had entertained himself by breaking into government servers and reading any files that caught his eye. At some point, Ray had found the Achievement Hunters. Ray tells Michael much later that he had followed their activities for months. Then one day they had shown up at the office and all their files had been gone, replaced with just a single document that insisted Ray get hired. Geoff had been furious, had torn up to New York with Michael, barely containing his urge to just send Jack to kill him instead. They had stormed up the stairs in Ray’s apartment building, knocked on the door, and Ray had just opened it and blinked. “Geoff Ramsey,” he’d said. “You here to hire me, or kill me?” That was it, Michael had thought while Geoff reddened, Ray had just said the worst possible thing and now he was fucked.

“Pack your shit. You’re coming to Austin.” And that had been a surprise, watching Ray nod and pack, this fucking _kid_ with no experience or anything. Geoff eventually tells Michael that he’d decided to hire him the second he had opened the door, because here was this kid fresh out of high school who had nothing better to do than demand a job from government assassins. In a way, Geoff says, he could relate.

Everything had worked great for a long time, before Geoff realised that Ray also has a knack for math and angles, quick thinking and acting, and the steadiest hands he’d seen since Michael. So Ray went through sniper and weapons and field training, and then had started out in the field as well.

Ryan remains the biggest mystery to Michael. The Achievement Hunters had been on downtime, wrapping up some loose ends from previous jobs, when Burnie had come in with a new guy in tow. “This is Ryan,” Burnie had said. “He’s yours now. He’s benched; no field work, no arguments.” Ryan, behind him, was just smirking. And at first Geoff hadn’t wanted him, until Ryan had proved himself so fast on communications that Geoff couldn’t keep up, and so had carved himself a place in the team.

Michael had eventually asked him why he was stuck on desk jobs, and Ryan had gotten all offended. “I did a bunch of really important jobs, did real fucking well, and then I made _one_ mistake and they _fucked_ me.”

Geoff had whirled around. “You killed an entire room of people unrelated to your mission. Just popped them all in their heads.”

Ryan had frowned, then laughed self-deprecatingly. “Yeah,” he said, surrendering. “Yeah. Okay, I _did_ do that.” So it turned out Ryan had been benched because even though he was _excellent_ at what he did, he was deemed unstable – “Psychotic,” Burnie said – but had other skills that made him valuable, valuable enough for him not to be eliminated entirely.

But here’s the thing – Michael doesn’t know any of that kind of thing about Gavin. He knows _nothing_ about him. And here is this fucking letter, which really just indicates that these people, these targets, have in turn been targeting Gavin. Michael intends to find out why. He doesn’t know where Gavin has been staying while he’s here, or what he’s been doing with Ray out of commission – frankly, he doesn’t care – but he figures his best bet is to try and find him at the offices. So, Michael drives down.

It takes him thirty minutes to even get through the corridors to the Achievement Hunter office. People keep stopping him to offer sympathy for Ray. Michael tries to be polite and gracious, but his anger is bubbling just below the surface, and it just comes across as impatient. People seem to assume it’s frustration and worry for Ray, though, so eventually they leave him be and he can move on.

Lo and behold, Gavin is in the office when Michael arrives. Michael recognises, now, the movements Gavin makes whenever Michael enters the same room as him. Gavin’s entire body shivers and stiffens, and Michael can almost feel the sharp intake of breath. Gavin’s head whirls – Michael will never be able to sneak up on him, never be able to pretend to be someone else, and part of him regrets that because that might one day be useful – and instantly stands up from the couch when his eyes fall on Michael in the doorway. Michael shuts the door quietly and storms over.

“Michael?” But when Michael doesn’t answer and Gavin realises he’s out for blood, he starts scrambling backwards. Michael reaches him just as his back hits the wall and he yelps, and Michael’s fist clenches in his shirt by his throat and holds him steady while he leans in close. “Michael!”

“Why the _fuck_ are you here?” Michael demands. “ _Why?_ ”

Gavin is clearly confused. “Wh- _what?_ MI6 sent me!”

“Why are you _really_?” Michael’s free hand digs in his pocket and he brings the letter up to Gavin’s face. “What the fuck is this? Are they here for you?” Gavin’s eyes quick read the letter, and his face pales instantly. “They fucking _are_ , aren’t they?”

“No, Michael...”

Michael doesn’t let him talk, just pulls him forwards and slams him back into the wall again. Gavin grunts. “Tell me what’s going on! You’re a real piece of shit, _you fucking tell me what’s going on!_ ” Gavin still hesitates. “ _Ray almost died_. You got him _fucking shot!_ You owe me a fucking explanation!”

“They found out!” Gavin blurts. “They bloody well found out about me, Michael!” Michael recoils backwards, releasing him as though he’s been burned. Gavin’s whole body sags and he slides down the wall to sit on the floor, head in his hands.

“So, what, this is your personal fucking vendetta?” Michael asks.

“No, Christ no,” Gavin says. He pauses, and sighs heavily. “How many people know about you? Do your parents know? Any friends? Or are the only two people that know you’re a Guide currently in this room?”

“This isn’t about me,” Michael growls.

“I told my commanding officer when he interviewed me for MI6,” Gavin tells him. “I thought it would help me get the job, you know? ‘Look at me, I’m a bloody Sentinel, let me see things better for you.’ And it worked. Got the job, obviously. And got promptly told if I told a single other person, I’d be out on my arse.”

Michael isn’t sure where this is going, but he can’t help himself. “ _And?_ ”

“Everett Bishop intercepted communication between me and my C.O. And he told some people. Important people in MI5. My C.O. was notified, told to put me in much higher danger places on the front lines or they’d announce it to Britain and not give me the option. But my C.O. likes me where I am and, uh... Well, turns out I’m more of an asset than Everett and Con and the person who wrote that letter.”

Michael clenches his teeth. “Who wrote this letter?”

“Tammy. Um. Tamara Osborne, from MI5. She’s... Well, she’s leading the charge against me, so to speak.”

“Why didn’t you _say_ something?” Michael demands. Gavin wobbles to his feet.

“I can’t let anyone else know, Michael! I don’t go around just bloody announcing that I’m a damned Sentinel. You _know_ what that’s like!”

“But you couldn’t have just said they were on your ass? At least given us the knowledge, so we could react properly?” Gavin looks pained. “You could have stopped Ray getting fucking shot, Gavin. Given us more time to prepare if we’d known Wilson wasn’t going to fuck off the second he had a chance, if we’d known he was here for you!”

“I know,” Gavin moans. “I know, Michael.”

Michael scrunches the letter up and shoves it back into his pocket. “You’re going to fucking tell them,” he says. Gavin’s eyes widen and he makes a dozen aborted sounds in surprise. “I don’t give two shits if you tell them you’re a Sentinel or not. Frankly, it works better for me if you don’t. But you’re damn well going to tell them this is about you.” Gavin hesitates again. “If you don’t, I will. And I will tell them fucking _everything_.”

Gavin is trembling. “You wouldn’t,” he whispers. “You don’t want them to know about you, either.”

Michael stalks close again. Gavin’s throat bobs as he swallows, and this close to a Sentinel with emotions running high, Michael is pretty sure he can feel Gavin’s heart pounding through his chest. “I will tell them every single fucking thing, Gavin. Try me.”

Gavin bites his lip. “Alright,” he says, almost a whisper. “I’ll tell them.”

“Good.” Michael steps back. “Grab your shit.”

“What?” Gavin squawks. “Now?”

Michael whirls back around, already halfway to the door. “Yes, fucking _now_. You’re not backing out of this shit, Gavin, fuck that. And if you don’t want Geoff to kill you where you stand, you’ll want it to be in public. Ray just woke up.” He turns back around and heads out of the office and back down the corridor, hearing Gavin scrabble for his bag and phone and hurrying after him.

Michael calls Ryan and Jack on the road to check that they’re on their way into the hospital, to check Geoff had been in the right state of mind to let them know Ray was awake. They’re already there when Michael and Gavin walk in from a tense, otherwise silent car ride in. Ray is sitting up, propped on pillows, Geoff still sitting beside him holding his hand. They both look exhausted.

“Gavin,” Ray says with some surprise, voice croaky, eyes flicking back and forth between Gavin and Michael with no small amount of confusion.

“Hey, Ray,” Gavin answers softly. “How are you feeling?”

Ray shrugs with his one good shoulder. “Like some asshole shot me a couple of times. No biggie.” Michael sees Gavin wince a tiny bit, and glance to Michael. Michael meets his eyes with a glare.

“What’s going on?” Geoff asks.

“I, uh, I have something to tell you. All of you.” Everyone is silent, expectant. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you. Uh, about these targets.” Geoff’s face is already darkening, but he sits still. Gavin can’t meet anyone’s eyes. “The... The sensitive information they had, that MI6 doesn’t want out? It’s about me.”

“What is it?” Geoff asks, and his voice sounds dangerous. “Tell me, right the fuck now, Gavin.”

“I can’t,” Gavin whispers. “It’s classified.”

Wrong thing to say. Geoff lunges for him, arm outstretched. Jack shouts something wordless and leaps between them, restraining Geoff at the moment Ryan snags Jack’s pistol from its holster by his hip and presses the muzzle against Gavin’s temple. Gavin sucks in a breath, flinches inwards, and freezes, palms out in front of him.

“Ryan,” Michael says slowly. “Put it down.”

“You fucking _tell me,_ Gavin!” Geoff yells, straining against Jack’s hold. “I will let him shoot you, I swear to Christ!”

“I can’t, Geoff, I really can’t,” Gavin babbles, voice trembling and body shaking. “Please, it would be worse, it would put you in so much more danger, Geoff.” Geoff looks ready to tell Ryan to do it anyway, but Gavin keeps going. “I’m under orders, my C.O. is killing the people that have this information. That’s why I’m here, please, Christ, Geoff.”

“Ryan, come on,” Michael urges, “put it down.”

Geoff turns to glare at Michael. “Did you know about this?”

Michael fishes out the crunched letter. “Only just. Found this in the warehouse.” Geoff snatches it and skims it as Jack slowly lets him go. Geoff walks back to his chair and sinks into it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Geoff asks, but he doesn’t sound angry, just defeated.

Michael gestures to Ray in bed, and raises an eyebrow. “We had bigger problems.”

“Oh, no, don’t mind the Puerto Rican,” Ray says drily. “I’ve just been shot. Not a big deal.”

“Ray,” Gavin whispers, pained. “I’m sorry, I am, I didn’t mean for it to be like this.” Geoff glares at him sharply, but Ray just shrugs.

“Shit happens.”

“That’s it?” Ryan asks, slowly lowering the gun from Gavin’s head now that it doesn’t look like Geoff is going to order him to shoot. “Just, ‘shit happens’?” Ray just nods, and Michael doesn’t quite understand how he can be so forgiving, but Gavin’s face beams and tears spill over his cheeks, and Ray matches his smile when Gavin moves over to the other side of the bed from Geoff to squeeze Ray’s hand. Maybe there’s a friendship there Michael hasn’t seen build, maybe it’s because Michael’s presence just soothes everyone, maybe it’s something else. Whatever it is, it seems to work for them, anyway.

“How many more targets are we taking out for this?” Geoff asks, tired.

“Just one,” Gavin tells him gently. “The person who wrote that,” and he points to the letter in Geoff’s hand.

“When?”

Gavin shrugs. “Haven’t been given the order. She’s on a series of missions for MI5, too important to interrupt.” He glances to Michael and smiles wryly. “Sorry lads, you’re stuck with me for now.”

Geoff takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Ray is benched, obviously. So until we get an order from England, you’re damn well picking up the slack, hear me?” Gavin nods. “You do what we say, when we say it. These are _our_ missions, now, not yours, and not MI6’s, so you don’t get to tell my people what to do. That’s back on me and Jack. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah Geoff,” Gavin breathes, relieved.

Geoff grunts and looks to Michael. “Take him back to the office. Check in with Burnie for me, see if there’s anything new. You know the drill, Michael.” Michael nods – he does, sounds like a usual Monday, except Burnie is going to hand him his file, not Geoff.

“Will do, boss.”

Gavin pats Ray’s shoulder and moves back outside the room to wait for Michael. “Oh, and Michael. This can’t happen again,” Geoff says lowly.

Michael crosses his arms. “I don’t know how you expect me to be the one to stop him.”

“I meant you.” Michael’s breath catches as Geoff holds his gaze hard. “When I gave you this job, I told you there were two things you couldn’t do ever again. Never kill a target without the order, and don’t keep information from me. But here we are.”

“Geoff, you were worried about Ray--” Geoff’s palm comes up and Michael cuts himself off.

“Is there anything _else_ I need to know, Michael?”

Michael thinks about how he’s kept these people calm throughout the years he’s been with them. He thinks about the fear he’s felt since he was thirteen, knowing no one could find out, knowing he’s always going to keep this a secret. He thinks about the utter terror he felt when Gavin had first shown up, when Gavin had found out, when they’d had that conversation in an empty conference room. And he thinks about what will happen to him if Geoff ever learns that he’s a Guide, because Gavin is a Sentinel, and Gavin is useful, but Guides are only supposed to support Sentinels, they’re not supposed to be their own person. And Michael says, “No. There’s nothing else.”

Geoff nods. “Get him out of here and get to work.” So Michael leaves.

Gavin is standing by the car when Michael gets out. Michael’s lungs are frozen and his heart is pounding, and Gavin knows this the second he approaches. “Michael?” he asks, worried, but Michael just stumbles into the side of the car and tries to gulp in air, desperate.

“He can never know,” Michael manages to gasp out. “Geoff, he can never find out about me.” Gavin is nodding, agreeing solidly, and Michael hears, “Okay, okay, it’s okay,” and feels himself pulled into gangly arms and against hard lines, and Michael can’t find it in himself to pull away.

 

* * *

 

They don’t talk about it, obviously. Burnie gives them a few files when they get back to Rooster Teeth, tells them they need to get the jobs done but there’s no real rush to it, and they spend the next few work days alone in the office working through them. But as Michael follows his usual method of sorting through information, he keeps thinking about his secrets and how he’s relying on Gavin to keep them, and how much that scares him.

And, like always, he turns to anger to hide it.

He yells at Gavin when he takes too long to do something. He yells at him when Gavin makes a mistake, or changes his mind. He yells at him when Gavin gets flustered and forgets something, or doesn’t follow up on a lead immediately, or when Gavin tries to leave the room to give Michael space and runs into a chair or a desk or a door frame.

And then when Geoff and the rest of the Achievement Hunters finally come back to work, Ray in tow with his shoulder wrapped and even thinner than before – if such a thing is possible – Michael stands up and growls, “Thank fuck. _You_ can take care of him,” and storms out of the room.

Gavin is in a great mood when Michael eventually comes back in, because of _course_ he is, updating Geoff on the work they’ve done and joking with the others about anything and everything. Gavin’s eyes glance to him when he comes back in, and his entire face lights up while he’s talking, hands animated. But Michael can’t stand that, doesn’t want to look too closely at that, so he turns away and sits down, puts his headphones on for the first time in days, and gets back to work.

“I’d thought you and Gavin...” Ray says one afternoon in the lunch room while he picks the lettuce out of his sandwich.

Michael glares at him. “Thought me and Gavin _what_?”

Ray shrugs, but the movement still makes him wince. “Thought you and Gavin might be, you know, friends or something, at least? You seemed to be buddy-buddy with him the other day, and he’s got the stupidest giant crush on you, still.”

Michael glares harder. “Fuck’s sake, stop saying that. No, he really doesn’t. He’s just dumb as fuck and doesn’t seem to get that I hate him.”

Ray hums as he puts the rest of his sandwich back together. “You don’t hate him. You’re just as into him as he is into you.” And Michael shoves his chair back from the table and storms away, trying to ignore Ray’s laughter behind him.

But it sticks with him while he works that afternoon, and the next day, and the day after that. And it’s certainly true that Gavin is always looking at him, always smiling at him, always trying to get his attention, always laughing off Michael’s frustrated insults and threats, always cooing, “Aww, Michael,” with that stupid fucking accent.

Then one morning Gavin drapes himself over Michael’s shoulders while he watches CCTV footage from California, arms loose around his chest. Michael’s finger stutters on his mouse and his heart suddenly starts pounding, and Gavin’s soft amused huff next to his ear tells Michael that he absolutely knows it. And just as Gavin lets his weight rest more heavily on Michael’s back, Michael twists his chair out from the desk and moves away, and Gavin goes crashing to the floor with a yelp.

Michael bursts into surprised laughter, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes, as he points down to Gavin and gasps out, “That’s what you get, you stupid _fuck,_ ” between laughs. He’s still laughing as he wipes away tears and Gavin pushes himself to his knees, grinning up at him from the floor. Michael turns his chair to laugh with Geoff as well, who’s always laughing at Gavin, but this time he’s not. No one is. They’re all staring at Michael, shocked to silence, and Michael’s laughter fades away.

Because laughter isn’t a sound they’ve ever heard from him. Michael doesn’t laugh like he doesn’t cry, and doesn’t smile without forcing it onto his face. Hell, Michael doesn’t remember the last time he laughed at all. Gavin is very still, eyes slowly widening as he figures it out, too, grin fading into pure and open excitement and hope – and is that  pride? – so Michael does the only thing he can think of. He lifts his leg and pushes Gavin away with his foot. “Get back to work, asshole,” he mutters, and promptly turns away to ignore everyone.

It starts happening more. Gavin might trip into something, or Ray might tell a joke, or Ryan might flub an entire sentence over the comms, and Michael chuckles, or watches Gavin pick himself up with a small smile until he sees Ray with a meaningful raised eyebrow. He always catches himself too late, someone sees, someone says something, but every day it’s harder to not show a little more emotion.

Geoff starts pairing Gavin and Michael up for small tasks when it becomes clear Michael isn’t going to strangle Gavin halfway through something. At first, Michael thinks maybe Geoff will pair him with Jack when he realises he’s infinitely better than Gavin at everything, except Gavin turns out to not be terrible at all, and in fact seems to respond perfectly to Michael’s prompts and energy, and doesn’t just keep up, but actively _advances them_. It infuriates Michael, so he works even harder, just to prove that he _can_ – and at this point he doesn’t know who he’s trying to prove it to, whether it’s Geoff or Gavin or himself. And then before he knows it, Burnie is catching him on the way out one night and congratulating him on the new powerhouse that is Michael and Gavin. He’s fucked. He’s very fucked.

It’s too much to hope for that Burnie doesn’t encourage Geoff to give them more to do together. The next day when Michael comes back from a late lunch, Gavin is humming with excitement, and Geoff is smirking. “Gear up, Michael. You and Gavvers are going in together for this one.”

Michael throws his bag under his desk and starts changing, ignoring Gavin’s inane babbling while Geoff gives him the details – female, last name Nelson, thirty-four years old, NSA wants her gone and isn’t too happy about handing it to the CIA, to say the least, so there’s no room for fucking it up. And through it all, Gavin talks and chatters and laughs and fidgets, until Michael turns to him, strapping his pistol to his thigh, and says, “Gavin, _shut the fuck up_.”

Gavin stills, but looks at him with a sly grin. “Want to put money on this, Michael?”

“Put money on _what_?”

“I bet I get a better performance review out of this one. Twenty quid?”

“Dollars, dipshit. And you’re fucking on, asshole,” but the idea of Gavin actually winning is _hilarious_ to Michael, and he laughs as he says it before he can stop himself. The others still glance at him in surprise when he does it, but Michael has been carefully trying to play it as though nothing has changed.

“We’ll see, Michael,” Gavin croons, and fumbles with his knife. It drops to the floor and Michael smiles softly, but the movement works and the office forgets Michael to tease Gavin instead.

Michael expects it to be easy, expects Gavin to linger back and risk getting himself killed while he stumbles into walls and obstacles, making enough noise to blow the whole operation. What he doesn’t expect is the instant change the moment Gavin steps outside the office. Suddenly, he’s all business, finger hovering over his earpiece as he strides through corridors, going over details with Geoff and Ryan.

“Our helicopter is a little noisier than I’d like, Geoff,” he says, climbing into the SUV outside. “How high are we going to have to go to negate that?”

Geoff laughs over the comms. “Don’t you worry about that, Gavin.” Gavin does worry about it, though, face stern as he runs Michael through the plan a half dozen times before they arrive at the airport. Handlers rush the SUV through to their private section, and Gavin gasps halfway through a sentence telling Michael about avoiding collateral during the mission and presses himself up against the window, professionalism broken for the moment again. He’s out the second the SUV stops.

“Geoff!” he yells through the earpiece. “ _You got me a Black Hawk_.”

“MH-60, buddy. NSA _really_ wants Nelson gone, and she’ll have eyes out for you.” Gavin’s eyes are wide. “You and Michael will be safe in this babe.”

Gavin is almost reverent as he climbs into the chopper and pulls on a parachute before strapping himself in. “You like these things?” Michael calls to him as he does the same.

Gavin nods eagerly. “Always a bit of a flying nut back home,” he yells back over the sound of the rotors, “but never got anything bigger than a Puma. Said I was too erratic in the air!” Michael believes that completely. Gavin satisfies himself for half the trip up to Nebraska, where Nelson is holed up – God knows why – just studying the helicopter around him. The rest of it he spends going over the plan again and again with Michael.

“I get it!” Michael finally yells. “I get it. I’m not going to fuck it up, Gavin, I’ve been doing this just as long as you.”

Gavin smiles. “I doubt that,” he answers, but he stops. Michael rolls his eyes and they fall into silence as the Black Hawk approaches the drop point.

“Ready to go, sir,” the Handler in the chopper with them finally says to Gavin, when the sky is dark as pitch and all they can see is tiny dots of lights. Gavin nods and his finger goes to his ear again.

“Geoff? Ready to jump.”

“Stand by.”

Gavin looks to Michael. “Which building is it?” he asks, and Michael scoffs.

“You don’t need to quiz me, you piece of shit.” He goes to the window with him anyway. “The one with the huge ass satellite dish on it. Can’t see it from here, but it’s on the north side of town. Covered in little red lights, anyway, won’t be hard to find.” Gavin nods.

“Breach plan?”

“Fire exit, enter through the roof and down to the fifth floor. I’ve _got it_ , Gavin.”

Gavin nods again, and then Geoff is telling them to go, and the Handler is opening the helicopter door. Gavin faces Michael, back to the opening, salutes with a grin, and jumps out backwards. “Asshole,” Michael growls, and runs to jump after him.

“Wind is good!” Gavin yells through their comms. Michael doesn’t answer. He doesn’t often get to parachute into a job, but loves the free fall. He closes his eyes for a moment to soak it all in, to release everything that’s been weighing on him, even for just a moment. They fall for a minute or so before Gavin says, “Release!”

Almost as one, they pull their cords and their chutes pop. Gavin is a fair way below him, as planned. Michael has tangled with other jumpers before, and that’s a mistake they can’t make. They’re low enough now that they can aim their chutes for the building they need, and it’s a gentle descent down. Michael watches as Gavin lands and unhooks his parachute, stepping out of the way with enough time for Michael to touch down beside him. He throws his chute bag off and follows Gavin at a low jog to the fire exit door.

“It’s not locked,” Michael whispers to Geoff as Gavin slips inside, Michael behind him. “That’s not right.” Gavin’s eyes are flicking everywhere in the stairwell.

“She has backup, then. Be careful,” Geoff orders. Michael lowers his finger from his ear to pull out his pistol and hold it steady as they creep down fourteen flights of stairs to pause outside a door labelled ‘ _5’_. Michael reaches for the handle and glances at Gavin, who nods, and they duck inside.

Nothing moves. The fifth floor is office cubicles and not much else, and it’s to one of these Gavin leads Michael now. They duck down behind the shoulder-high walls, and Gavin keeps glancing around the edges while Michael thinks.

“Are you sure they’re here, Geoff?” he whispers angrily. “Because there’s no movement, no sound, nothing.”

“We’ve got someone in the building across, Michael, we’ve had visual, and they haven’t come out of any of the exits. We have local agents posted. They’re there.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Michael mutters, dropping the connection and looking at Gavin.

Gavin is nodding. “They’re here. I can hear them. This way.” He jumps up and hurries to the end of the room, stopping before a corner and backing into the wall, whipping his arm out to pull Michael in next to him. His finger goes to his lips to keep Michael quiet, and Michael nods. Gavin leans over to Michael’s ear. “They’re around here,” he murmurs, barely a breath. “Stay quiet for a mo, yeah?” Michael nods again, and Gavin straightens against the wall and lets his eyes slide shut.

He listens for a while, and his nostrils flare a little, and he stays very still. Michael waits for him to come back, waits a little longer, a little longer more, before he gets worried and gently moves to press his cheek to Gavin’s, the only scrap of skin free to shoot electricity between each other. Gavin gasps softly and his eyes shoot open. He shakes his body and rolls his shoulders.

“Ta,” he murmurs, and then looks at Michael properly. “There’s four of them, only four. Good odds, yeah?” he grins. Michael snorts and smiles, and Gavin’s face brightens in response before Michael clears his throat and shuts his own smile down.

“Are they close?” Gavin nods, so Michael grabs goggles from his belt and indicates to Gavin to do the same. With goggles on, Michael pulls a smoke grenade off his belt as well, and holds it aloft. He tilts his head, question clear, and Gavin nods again. “High or low?”

“I’ll go high,” Gavin whispers. Michael crouches down and pulls the pin, and gently throws the grenade along the floor around the corner. It bounces down with soft thuds, and explodes, spewing smoke out. Four voices shout in surprise, and Michael and Gavin turn the corner as one, Michael crouched and Gavin standing over him.

The goggles show them the room clearly, infrared cutting through the smoke with no issues. Michael shoots once and his target goes down, but as he turns to aim again, Gavin lets off three shots of his own in quick succession and everyone else drops. Gavin ducks back around the corner and Michael dive-rolls back with him, and they wait.

They pull their goggles off as the smoke clears. “Report,” Geoff demands through the earpiece.

“Four down,” Gavin answers, clipped. “No I.D. yet. Going in.” He looks at Michael, back to standing beside him. “Watch yourself. Until we clear that whole area, we stick together.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Michael mutters, but he agrees completely. He’s not going to let either of them end up like Ray. They swing back around the corner and creep forward, and Michael checks the bodies while Gavin stands over him as guard. “She’s not here,” he determines, and stands up just as Nelson rounds another corner, pistol aimed. For a split second Michael is horrified, because it’s happening again, but Gavin must have already realised, because he’s already made the movement to push Michael away when she shoots, and the bullet whips over him as he goes down.

“Sorry, love,” Gavin says to her with a grin, and returns fire, and Nelson smacks back against the wall as she’s hit, and collapses to the ground.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Michael grunts as he pushes himself back to his feet. “Nice warning, asshole.”

Gavin shrugs as they quick work to clear the rest of the space. “Only thing I could think of,” Gavin mutters, and that surprises Michael enough that he bursts into laughter.

“Clear, Geoff,” he says into his earpiece as he’s laughing. “Send in the clean-up crew.”

“Well done, boys. Nelson?”

“Eliminated.”

“Good. See you back in Austin.”

And Michael is in such a good mood that when Gavin slings an arm around his shoulders to lead him out, he doesn’t move to shrug him off. Hell, he even gives him a twenty dollar bill with a wry smile in full view of everyone when they make it back home the next morning.

 

* * *

 

  
That’s how it goes for weeks. Geoff sends them both out together on missions, keeps them together gathering information, and Michael smiling and laughing more and more. It’s not just laughter. When a friend of his gets into a minor car accident, Michael gets upset, and he _cries_ when he thinks about it too much. When Michael’s apartment floods on his day off, he panics, doesn’t know what to do, and hyperventilates when he calls the office and lets Jack and Ryan run him through some people to call. When Ray goes back out to his first field-mission in weeks – just a little small thing, nothing major, low risk – Michael worries, and spends the afternoon listening in to his communications with his knees bouncing and his palms sweating.

It’s worse with Gavin around, so much worse. They’re on a mission when he brings it up, flat on their stomachs next to each other waiting for the order to climb out of the crawl space they’re hiding in. “What exactly are you doing to me?” he asks. Gavin glances at him.

“What?”

“This whole emotion thing, asshole. It’s your fault, somehow.” Gavin smiles.

“Ah. You didn’t think Sentinels are the only ones to get a benefit out of being near a Guide, did you?” And that’s the end of the conversation, because Ryan tells them to go, and they do. Michael doesn’t ask again, just thinks about it, thinks about why that kind of thing was hidden from all the research he did when he was young, and wonders what else might happen the more time he spends with Gavin.

Then, one day, Geoff orders Gavin to go in to a mission alone. Michael is, bizarrely, bothered by this. “What do you mean?” he demands. “Gavin and I go in together. That’s how we’ve been doing it, why change it now?”

“Aw, Michael,” Gavin coos happily.

Ray snorts, and mutters, “You two are cute,” and Michael feels his face flush, so shuts up.

“ _Because_ ,” Jack explains, “someone needs to go through the air vents, snag the photos, and get out. It has to be quick, and it has to be quiet.”

“And to be honest, Gavin is weedy and pathetic, so, you know, he’ll fit in there better,” Ryan adds, and Gavin squawks a few offended sounds. Michael huffs and settles for helping Gavin gear up.

“I’ll be fine, my little Michael,” Gavin squeaks as Michael, up close, checks his suit and guns for the fourth time.

“Shut the fuck up,” Michael snaps, pushing him away. “I don’t give a shit about _you_ , Gavin, I care about the damn photos. We need those.”

“I’ll be fine,” Gavin repeats, smiling as though the shove hasn’t offended him in the slightest. Michael rolls his eyes and sits back down at his desk chair while Gavin goes through the mission details with Geoff and Jack again, and only looks up when Gavin opens the office door, salutes them with a cocky two-fingers up-and-away from his eyebrow and a wink, and turns to jog away for the SUV.

“He’ll be fine,” Ray murmurs, moving to sit by Michael while they wait. Michael snorts.

“I really don’t care,” he says, turning away again. But, of all things, he does.

Ray breaks them into the CCTV of the office buildings Gavin is being driven to. He snorts as the screens in the room all flicker and start displaying the footage. “Pathetic,” he murmurs, but he’s grinning.

“Good lad. Keep them out of it, our eyes only,” Geoff says, and hovers between him and Ryan, who is updating Gavin the whole way. Michael watches carefully.

“I’m here,” Gavin says through the speaker system Geoff has open in the office just as Michael sees him on camera, ducking against the wall of the building. Michael watches him skirt around the building to the fire escape, and climb. They lose him on the roof, but Gavin keeps them updated as he tells Ray to cut power to the fans on the roof after he’s unbolted the covering grates so he can slip past the blades and slither into the building’s vents.

“Christ alive, it’s tight in here,” Gavin whispers, grunting.

“Keep quiet,” Geoff snaps, and Michael hears Gavin huff a laugh before the comms shut off again. Geoff shakes his head. “Should have sent Michael,” he mutters. Michael doesn’t answer, just waits and watches the footage of the room Gavin has to enter.

After what feels like hours, the man in the office stands up and leaves, and it’s only a few seconds after that the vent grate in the room pops off and drops to the floor, string tied around one of the metal pieces. Gavin slides out afterwards, and runs to the desk.

“Combination again, Geoff?” Gavin asks, crouching by the desk where Michael knows there’s a safe. Geoff rattles off some numbers, and Gavin is silent for a moment, before he breathes, “Got them,” and stands up.

“Are they the right ones?” Geoff demands, and Gavin’s head ducks as he flicks through the photos, and Michael watches as he gets to the last one and his body stiffens and his lips part, and brings it up to his face to study closer, and he freezes. “Gavin, are they the right photos?” Geoff asks again, but Gavin doesn’t answer, doesn’t move.

“Fuck,” Michael breathes right as Geoff whirls to Ryan to demand they check the communications are working, but Michael knows they’re fine. Gavin has gone into a trance.

“Geoff,” Ray calls, voice high with worry. Geoff turns back and Ray points. The man from the office is coming back down the corridor. He’s stopped by another employee, and Geoff jumps to the speaker.

“ _Gavin_. Get out! You’re about to get busted!” But Gavin still doesn’t move, and Michael realises with dawning horror that he’s not going to, his trances last too long, he’s stuck in all his senses and no one is there to pull him out of it.

“ _Gavin!_ ” Jack yells as well, and Ryan looks stricken.

“ _Get the fuck out_!” Geoff shouts, and Michael is frozen in place, because Geoff can’t find out about Gavin, can’t find out about _him_ , can’t find out he’s a Guide, because that’s the third strike for him and Michael isn’t sure anyone gets _fired_ from Achievement Hunter, but they could lock him up forever or just go right ahead and shoot him. He’s worked so hard to get here, _so fucking hard_ , and he can’t lose it now, but as he watches the man from the office take another step towards Gavin he also realises that – God help him – he also can’t lose Gavin, he can’t lose the only other person who knows what this life is like.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he curses, and jumps up, shoving Geoff and Jack aside to lean over the speaker. He jams his finger down onto the button and takes a deep breath. “ _Gavin_.”

He watches as Gavin’s body jolts on screen and one hand lifts to his ear. “Michael?” he asks, voice wobbly and quiet and scared.

“Gavin, listen to me, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Gavin breathes.

“Close your eyes, Gav, you’ve got to stop looking, you’re stuck in a trance, get out of it.”

“I... I can’t... I...” Michael can almost feel him pulling back in.

“ _Yes, you can_. Listen to _me_ , don’t listen to anything else.”

“It works...on touch, Michael. I...”

“ _Then remember me touching you_. Think about that.” Michael’s hair stands up on end, and he can almost feel the crackle of electricity between their skin. “Remember when you found out? And I forgot my gloves? That was the first one, remember?” And Gavin’s whole body shakes as he gasps in a breath and stumbles forwards as the man from the office starts walking again.

“Christ,” Gavin grunts.

“Good. Gavin, get out, he’s coming back!” Gavin runs. He grabs the string on the grate and jumps, pulls himself back up to the vent and wriggles back inside, pulls the grate up and clicks it back into place just as the office door opens again.

The Achievement Hunters breathe a collective sigh of relief and sag, everyone except Michael, who stays fixed over the communication speaker. “Get out of there, Gavin, come back here, okay?” He doesn’t get an answer, but a little while later sees Gavin clamber back down the fire escape and run away from the building.

“Can you stay in my ear, Michael?” Gavin asks, voice vulnerable and wobbly. Michael doesn’t even turn away to check and get permission.

“Yeah, Gavin, I’m right here. You’re okay, you’re okay.”

“Did you... Is Geoff...?” Michael swallows thickly and feels four pairs of eyes burning into him.

“Yeah,” Michael chokes out. “Geoff is here. I had to.”

“Bloody hell. I’m sorry,” Gavin whispers, and it sounds so broken that Michael feels tears well up and spill over his cheeks. He dashes them away.

“Me too.”

He keeps talking to Gavin while he’s driven back, resolutely not looking at anyone else. He can feel them staring at him, can imagine Geoff’s face darkened as he’s realised Michael has kept more from him, and actively lied about it. He straightens when Gavin tells him he’s back, and waits.

The second the door opens and Gavin stumbles in, their eyes meet and their lungs freeze, but Gavin reaches out to him desperately and Michael moves forward to tangle their fingers together, and the electricity that sparks between them helps them both pull air into their lungs and snaps Gavin completely back.

And that’s all fine until Gavin looks over Michael’s shoulder and freezes, right as Michael hears four clicks as four pistol hammers are cocked. Slowly, he turns to face his team.

“What the fuck is going on?” Geoff growls. Both his hands are aiming his pistol, and Michael recognises his stance as the one he uses when he means to shoot.

“Geoff...” he says slowly, but Geoff cuts him off.

“ _No!_ Tell me, right the fuck now, what the _fuck_ is going on. Gavin goes into a fucking ‘trance’, and you’re the only one who can pull him out of it? I’m calling a dickload of bullshit, kid. What are you? Sleeper agents? This some kind of long-con?”

“No,” Michael answers. “Fuck, no.”

“Then _what_?”

Michael glances at Gavin, stricken, but it’s too late now, really. Gavin takes a deep breath. “I’m a Sentinel,” Gavin murmurs. Michael closes his eyes, resigned, as everyone else’s eyes widen. They’re fucked, they’re both so completely fucked. But then Gavin’s fingers squeeze in his and Michael looks back to Geoff.

“And I’m a Guide.”


	4. Celebrate the Night (It's the Fall Before the Climb)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Listen to me very carefully, Gavin,” Michael growls. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want it to ever happen again, and I sure as shit don’t want to bond with you because of it.”

There’s a very long moment when Michael keenly regrets every aspect of the last few weeks that have led to this particular event. Geoff’s lips part in surprise for the briefest fraction of a second, and then snap shut while he re-steadies his hands holding his pistol. Something else in his body language must change, something that indicates he’s about to fire, because Gavin tenses and moves his arm as though to shove Michael out of the way again – and they’re really going to have to discuss that habit – except the shot never sounds. Jack steps forwards and gently pushes Geoff’s hands down to point the gun at the floor, and Geoff sags in the same moment Gavin relaxes.

“For fuck’s sake, Michael,” Geoff breathes. Then he straightens and his face hardens. “For fuck’s sake!” he repeats.

“I know, Geoff, I’m sorry,” Michael says, but Geoff cuts him off.

“No, you fucking _don’t_ know! You realise we’re not exactly in the business of _firing_ people when they fuck up, right? Because Jesus, kid, you’ve _fucked up right here_. You’ve fucked up _again_.”

“I know!” Michael tells him again. “I do, but Geoff, fuck, you have to understand--”

“Understand _what?_ What possible reason could you have for keeping this from me?”

Michael gestures to Gavin furiously. “Gavin is _killing_ the people who know he’s a Sentinel! That’s the whole reason he’s here! You think I’m just going to hand out that information to you guys, get you killed? You’re my fucking _family_ , for Christ’s sake, I wasn’t going to put your lives at risk!”

“I’m not talking about Gavin!” Geoff yells. “I’m talking about _you_! You should have told me you were a Guide from the moment I hired you!”

Michael moves to collapse in his chair. “Geoff,” he moans, and it sounds horribly broken. “People like me, Guides, we... We don’t get to do stuff like this. We get stuck with people like _him_ ,” and Michael points to Gavin who makes an aborted offended sound, “and we spend _our_ lives keeping _them_ safe. Guides aren’t the police officers, or the paramedics, we’re not the IED extractors or the agents who go in and eliminate targets. We’re just the _assistants_ to those people. Our whole lives are devoted to keeping  Sentinels safe, we don’t get to run our _own_ lives. And you want to know why I didn’t tell you? I was terrified you’d send me away to some unbonded Sentinel on the other side of the damn country and I’d be done here.”

Everyone has fallen silent during his speech, and the only sound that comes from anyone now is Geoff sighing heavily. “Kid, did you use your magical Guide powers when you found that information in Washington?”

Michael doesn’t have to ask what information he means. “No.”

“What about when you took out that target on your own initiative, without waiting for an order? Or when you disarmed Jack when I sent him to hire you because of it?”

“No.”

“Then you being a Guide doesn’t mean dick to me. You’re here under your own merits, not because of some bullshit biology that life saddled you with.”

And in a weird way, Michael is a little touched by that. He’s not convinced that Geoff would have sung the same tune at the beginning or if he would have simply decided that this kid, barely out of his own military training, wasn’t worth the effort. “I worked really hard to get here, Geoff,” Michael murmurs. “I didn’t want to lose this.”

Then Geoff surprises him, and holsters his pistol. He moves to sit in his own chair across the room, and nods. “I get it, Michael. I do.” Geoff looks to Gavin. “You, sit down.” Gavin obeys, sitting in the chair next to Michael. “Now. Both of you are going to tell me everything.”

They do. The whole room listens as Gavin explains the intercepted communication about his Sentinel abilities, and what that meant for him. They listen as Michael tells them how he figured out he was a Guide. They listen as Michael tells them about meeting Gavin, and what that meant for them both. And things are going really well – Geoff is nodding and calm, Jack is smiling a little at the side arguments Michael and Gavin have had during it all – when Gavin goes and ruins it all by saying, “And since Michael can make you all feel better, he’s a bloody good asset!”

Michael cringes and turns slowly to frown at him. “Gavin,” he mutters bitterly.

Geoff clenches his teeth so hard Michael can see his jaw bulge. “Explain,” he grits out. “Now.”

Michael doesn’t even bother arguing. “Okay, look, it’s not something I can control,” he says in a rush of air. “I can, uh, soothe emotions a bit?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Ray asks, and Michael has been so focused on Geoff he’s briefly startled.

Michael runs a hand through his curls, tugging in frustration. “I mean, uh.” He pauses to think. “Remember when Geoff and Jack had that argument on my morning off? And then a few hours after I arrived it didn’t seem so important anymore? Or, or Geoff. When Ray was in hospital, and I grabbed your arm in the parking lot, and you calmed down?” Geoff nods slowly. “That’s what I do. Completely unconsciously, I really have no control.”

Geoff is silent for a long time. Finally, his jaw unclenches, and he takes a deep breath. “Alright,” he says. “Alright. Is that the only weird shit?” Michael glances at Gavin, who nods. Geoff’s breath explodes from him with relief, but he gets up and starts pacing. “You two have put me in a hell of a position today.” He points at Gavin. “ _You_ very nearly blew it.”

“We know,” Michael tries to say, but Geoff cuts him off.

“Shut up.” Michael obeys. “I should pull you both out of the field right now. I should banish you to records or stick you on desk work. But Ray isn’t ready to go back to the big league, and who is supposed to support Jack out there?” In the background, Ryan suddenly sits up straighter and grins, but Geoff is already pointing at him. “Not you, never you.” Ryan slumps back again and Geoff stops his pacing in front of Michael’s chair. “And god help me, but you two together actually get results.”

Vaguely, Michael notices Gavin smile, just a little. He keeps his face emotionless as he asks, “So?” drawing the word out.

“So,” Geoff repeats back to him, “you’re both on probation. Serious probation. One more fuck up, and you’re done. Gavin back to the U.K., no arguments, and you,” Geoff pauses and points to Michael.

Michael nods. He’d drag his thumb across his throat left to right if it wasn’t already stupidly obvious to the whole room what Geoff had meant. “Are you... Are you going to tell Burnie?”

“I should. I fucking should. But you’d be no use to me then, so no.”

“Thank you,” Michael says, and means it.

“Don’t. Just, don’t.” Geoff waves his hand dismissively and turns away. “Get the fuck out of here, both of you. Don’t come back until morning. I have to do damage control.”

They don’t argue. Michael and Gavin both stand and hurry out, and don’t stop walking until they’re in the parking lot. There, they stand awkwardly, until Gavin gently touches a fingertip to Michael’s hand, and their skin fizzes together. Michael jerks his arm away, but Gavin still says, “Thank you. For what you did today.”

Michael whirls to face him. He wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to rage at Gavin until he’s out of breath and words. He wants to tell Gavin to fuck off, wants to tell him never to speak to him again, wants to tell him that he wishes he’d let Gavin be caught because it would be better than this, better than Geoff knowing. The kicker is, though, that Michael doesn’t believe that. So instead, all he says is, “Do you need a lift home?”

It’s clear from Gavin’s widening eyes and tiny intake of breath that wasn’t expecting that. He nods eagerly. “Yeah, that’d be great, cheers.” Michael grunts and jerks his head for Gavin to follow him, and leads him to his car. Gavin gives him directions to the hotel he’s staying in, courtesy of the British government, and they spend the first half of the trip in tense silence. Gavin, of course, is the one to break it.

“Michael, about today--”

“Shut the fuck up,” Michael interrupts. “I’m not talking about it.”

Gavin’s face twists. “We should, though. It’s going to be uncomfortable between us if we don’t, I mean, with the guiding earlier.”

“Listen to me very carefully, Gavin,” Michael growls. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want it to ever happen again, and I sure as shit don’t want to bond with you because of it.”

Gavin flushes ever so slightly, and his breath catches for the briefest moment. And fuck, Michael realises too late he shouldn’t have said anything at all, and maybe Ray was right about them both after all, and no, absolutely _not_ , Michael cannot let this happen, he has to stop this right now. “I...I didn’t mean--”

“What do you want me to say, Gavin?” Michael blurts. “Do you want me to tell you that I was fucking _scared_ , that I was actually terrified I was going to watch you get caught? Do you want me to tell you that I’ve just fucking realised I can’t lose you, I can’t lose the only person who actually understands what I am and what it means and what I’ve gone through my whole goddamn life?” He feels his fingers clenching on the steering wheel, sees Gavin’s slack, surprised mouth, and knows he can’t stop this, actually, he really can’t. “What do you want from me? You’ve been nothing but a giant pain in my ass from the moment you waltzed into the office, and what happened today was because for some fucking reason I actually enjoy you being around.” He pulls up in front of Gavin’s hotel and puts the car in park, smacks his palms on the wheel and then raises his hands to scrub away the wetness he feels trailing down his cheeks.

“Michael,” Gavin whispers.

“Fuck, now look. Am I crying?” Michael laughs, and he knows he’s just crossed into hysteria. “I hadn’t cried once in my whole fucking life, and then you turn up and it happens _twice_ , for fuck’s sake! And this is why I really don’t want to talk about it!”

Gavin unclips his seatbelt from its buckle. “I just wanted to say thank you,” Gavin murmurs. “I know you aren’t particularly fond of me, really,” and here Michael barks with laughter because he wants that to be true still, “but you did it anyway. Even though you were scared and knew what it meant with Geoff. Thank you.” Michael doesn’t answer, just shakes his head and flaps his hand. Gavin sighs softly and opens the car door. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Gavin finishes, and climbs out. He’s just about to shut the door again when Michael groans.

“Wait.” Gavin stops and leans down to look back into the car. “Be ready at 7:30,” Michael mutters, and he can’t quite believe he’s saying it. “I’ll pick you up.” Gavin’s whole face lights up and he nods, then he’s shutting the door and stepping back, and Michael is able to drive away.

His apartment is cool and silent, just the way Michael likes it. Usually.

 

* * *

 

Michael pulls the car up at 7:30 sharp the next morning, and is surprised to see Gavin already waiting. Gavin opens the door and slides into his seat, and holds out a takeout coffee cup for Michael to take. Michael blinks, confused, but sees that Gavin has a cup of his own, so takes a sip from the one he’s holding.

It’s black, and it’s good. “Thank you,” Michael says slowly as Gavin buckles himself into his seat.

“Least I can do, isn’t it?” Gavin asks, smiling. Truthfully, the least he could have done was be on time, but he’s not only _on time already_ , but to get the coffee beforehand he must have been downright early. Michael only hums as a response while he slips the coffee into his cup holder and starts the drive to the office.

The trip is made in silence but for the sounds of sipping, and Michael is grateful for that. The traffic is light enough that they arrive early, and when they enter the Achievement Hunter office a few minutes later, everyone whirls to look at them and Michael silently thinks that maybe it was a poor choice to arrive together. Only Geoff ignores them – he’s speaking firmly into his phone.

“You’re god damn right I’m pissed,” Geoff growls into the receiver he’s holding to his ear. “You let a Sentinel – an _unbonded_ Sentinel – into my office without telling me. And then he zoned out or whatever the fuck it is they do, and nearly blew my entire operation!” Gavin at least has the grace to look chagrined as he sits down at his desk. “You’re too right you owe me one,” Geoff continues. “And you can start by sending me the entire file you have on this whole bullshit mission Gavin is on.” There’s yelling on the other end, Michael can hear, and Geoff purples. “ _Excuse me_? You want him here, you want the CIA helping on this, you give me the fucking file.”

For awhile Geoff is silent, until an alert pops up on his computer and he sits back in his desk chair. “Yeah, got it,” Geoff says. “You got anything else about Gavin or this mission I should know about? Oh, no, I’ll make sure he’s working,” and here Geoff glances over at Gavin finally. “It better not happen again.” Geoff slams the receiver down. “Asshole.” He spins his chair around to face Michael and Gavin properly. “Joke’s on him anyway. We’ve got a Guide.”

Michael flushes a little, uncomfortable, but Gavin nods. “Michael can keep me focused, absolutely,” he answers, as though Geoff had asked him anything. Geoff just hums and nods, and turns away.

“Alright,” Jack interrupts. “New cases for everyone, so let’s worry about that.” Michael crosses the room and Jack hands him two identical manila folders, smiling as Michael’s mouth twists in distaste. “Sorry kid,” Jack chuckles. “Geoff’s orders. You and Gavin are stuck with each other.”

Gavin, the asshole, is grinning and already holding his own arm out for his copy, bouncing lightly in his chair. He’s the very picture of excitement and as much as he tries, Michael can’t tamp down the warm, fond feeling that rises in his chest at the sight. Gavin’s eyes are wide and his face is an open book, and Michael can’t help but chuckle, “Shut the fuck up,” as he throws the case file at him.

Michael pointedly ignores every single look Ray throws at him that day.

They fall into a routine. Every day Michael and Gavin stare at their files, at their computers, they listen to any scraps of recordings they can get to track down a target that has seemingly disappeared into the ether. For the most part, nothing has really changed, except that Geoff keeps a much closer eye on them, and Michael doesn’t have to worry about lightly touching Gavin’s skin when he goes into a trance, buried in a sense. Granted, Michael thinks every time, he feels like he’s stuck in a zoo enclosure – it must fascinate the others, because Gavin always jerks back into himself to a room of people staring, eyes snapped to where skin is on skin.

It’s after two days of no progress and less sleep, with Gavin falling into a trance every hour, that Michael slams the files closed and stands up. “We’re going home,” he tells Gavin firmly, and then looks to Geoff. “We’re going home,” he repeats.

Gavin’s face is pinched as he bundles up the files and follows Michael quietly to his car. He doesn’t speak for the entire journey, until Michael pulls up and turns the car off, and Gavin looks up and frowns. “This isn’t my hotel,” he says, and Michael hums and gets out. Gavin scrambles to follow.

“No. This is my apartment building,” Michael tells him, leading Gavin up the stairs and into his apartment. Gavin steps inside gingerly and stares around the living room with wide eyes, and only moves in further when Michael beckons him. “Want a beer?” Michael asks, stepping into his kitchen and tossing his keys onto the bench.

“Oh. Uh, okay?” Gavin answers. “Thank you.” Michael cracks two bottles open and carries them over to Gavin, placing one down on the coffee table in front of the couch. He points, and Gavin sits, tense on the edge of the cushion. He does take a sip, but then puts the beer back down to flip open one of the files. “So, Ryan said something about this today that made me think--”

Michael pulls his own beer from his lips to say, “Close the files.” Gavin looks up, clearly confused, so Michael puts his beer down and moves to gather the files out of Gavin’s hands. “We didn’t come back here to keep working, Gavin. We came here for you to drink your beer and get some sleep.”

Gavin’s lips pop open in surprise, and then in the blink of an eye he changes from nervous and uncomfortable to smug, grabbing his beer, sitting back and grinning slyly. “Michael. Are you _guiding_ me?”

Michael flushes hot and realises too late that yes, actually, that’s exactly what he’s doing _god damn it_. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls, and Gavin’s grin grows wider. “Alright, asshole. Let’s get this straight. This isn’t about guiding _anyone_. This is about making sure you don’t fuck us by being too exhausted to think. Got it?”

Gavin laughs, and Michael fumes. “Okay, Michael. No work tonight, but I’m also not going to sleep just yet.” He pats the couch cushion next to him. “Let’s talk. We only ever talk about work. Can we talk about something else?”

Michael turns to an end table against the wall and drops the files onto it, and crosses him arms. “No.”

“Aw, Michael.”

So Michael sighs and sits at the single armchair next to the couch. There is no amount of money Gavin could pay him to make Michael sit on the couch with him. “What do you want to talk about?” he asks, resigned, picking his beer back up.

Gavin wriggles in his seat – a sign of excitement, Michael has come to realise, and it makes him snort fondly – and taps his fingers on his beer bottle. “Tell me about your family, your friends.”

Michael is shocked to laughter. “Are you fucking serious?” He shakes his head firmly. “Absolutely not. You and I both know that’s not the kind of thing people in this job talk about. And you can be damn sure I’m not letting your bullshit government use my family against me when they find out what I am.”

For a long time, Gavin is quiet. His face has twisted, just a little, and for the first time in a long time Michael realises he can’t read it. Gavin’s eyes hold his the entire time, and just when Michael is preparing to tell him to fuck off, Gavin’s gaze drops. “Obviously my parents don’t know what I do. My siblings, either. But my mate Dan... I tell people he’s a dumb idiot, but he saw right through me. He’s a military man, too, and he knew when I started. He knew instantly.”

Michael doesn’t know what to say. He knows exactly what Gavin is doing – the son of a bitch is going one-for-one, giving him exactly what he wants in return, mutually-assured destruction if anything goes south – but god damn it, it’s working. “My friends think I’m an electrician,” he tells Gavin, and Gavin snorts beer out his nose. Michael bursts into laughter.

“ _What?_ An electrician? Do you know anything about that?”

Michael chuckles and swigs his beer. “Actually, yes. I’ve had training.”

Gavin’s eyes widen. “I’ve worked in film,” he offers back, voice quick and breath quicker. Slowly, Michael grins, and he starts to think that maybe, maybe, talking won’t be so bad. By the time they’ve finished their third beers, he’s not even questioning the decision.

 

* * *

 

Michael wakes the next morning when his phone starts vibrating on the nightstand next to his bed. A moment later, when Michael is already rolling over, the music of his alarm starts to play, but it barely manages a few notes before he’s turning it off and sliding out of bed.

Gavin is sleeping soundly on the couch, blanket tangled around his knees, arms and elbows askew and mouth slack in sleep. Michael firmly toes him in the stomach and Gavin jerks awake with a snort, arm shooting out to snag Michael’s ankle with tight fingers, eyes snapping open and zeroing in on Michael’s. For a long moment they’re still – Michael balanced on one leg and Gavin holding the other in place – and Michael can’t help but think about what a ridiculous picture they must make. “I should know better,” he admits by way of apology, and slowly Gavin’s fingers uncurl and let Michael’s foot drop.

Gavin shrugs and clambers off the couch. “I don’t blame you for not,” Gavin answers, and smiles, and Michael guesses that’s the end of that. “Do you have tea?” Gavin asks, glancing towards the kitchen. Michael looks at his watch – with the both of them to get ready before work, he should have set his alarm earlier.

“No time,” he says. “Shower is through my room, spare towels under the sink. Hurry.” Gavin bundles up his clothes and does as he’s told. Vaguely, Michael regrets not being able to lend him a fresh suit, but Gavin is tall and gangly where Michael is a shade too short, a touch too broad, and he knows putting Gavin in one of his suits will be much worse than having him show up at work in the same one as yesterday, especially when the other Hunters see him. He doesn’t want that gossip on top of everything else.

Gavin does shower quickly, thankfully. When Michael takes his turn, he has to try very hard to not think about Gavin in here. When he emerges, curls dripping, scrambling for his keys, it’s clear Gavin has been thinking the same thing when his face turns pink and he quickly turns away, and vaguely Michael wonders if showers weren’t a terrible idea as well, actually.

“Thanks,” Gavin murmurs in the car. “For letting me sleep.” It’s stupidly obvious he wants to say more, and Michael is too scared to let him. The ease with which they laughed and chatted over beers last night has fled with the shower water.

“It’s fine,” Michael tells him. “Really. Don’t... Uh, don’t think anything of it, just doing what I’d do for any partner in this job.” He doesn’t need to tell Gavin that it’s not true – Ray has never even been to Michael’s apartment, let alone slept on his couch or used his shower. Geoff has never sat on his couch with a beer. But Gavin... It kills Michael to admit it, but Gavin is different, Gavin knows who and what he is and what that means. And god help him, but the things he’d said to Gavin in the car days ago – how he actually likes having him around – were actually true.

He counts it as a blessing that Gavin doesn’t say anything in return.

Michael pointedly ignores Geoff’s delighted grin when they arrive, the way the boss’ eyes snap from Gavin’s wet hair to Michael’s, from Michael’s clean suit to Gavin’s day-old one. “Your apartment is a one-bedroom, isn’t it, Michael?” Geoff asks, voice innocent but eyes bright. Michael frowns as he sits down and takes the file Gavin holds out to him.

“Sure is,” he says, trying to seem careless. Gavin must hear his pounding heart, because he huffs a soft, fond, laugh as he takes his own seat. Geoff snorts and holds back a chuckle – Jack doesn’t hold his own back at all – but no more is said. No more needs to be said, they all think what they want now anyway.

“My lovely little Michael was just letting me sleep on the couch, lads,” Gavin pipes up, and the laughter around the room that that causes, Michael thinks, isn’t worth the explanation. Thank god for the sleep they’d both managed, though, because Gavin is back on his A-game and it’s not too long after they start working that Gavin slides his chair over and says, “Michael. Look, Michael!” He turns to look at Gavin’s computer screen, where he’s pointing. “Watch.”

Michael does. He watches for several seconds before Gavin jabs his finger onto the monitor and shrieks, “See?”

“See what, you dumbass. There’s nothing there.”

“No, no!” Gavin bounces in his seat. “When I slow it down, look.” Michael sighs heavily, but points his hand palm up at the screen, telling him to continue. Gavin takes the video he’s been studying and goes frame-by-frame. “Watch...” Michael is staring intently at the screen, watching their target, last name Davis, stroll across a street towards the camera, eyes down on his smart phone. “Wait...” Just as Gavin finishes speaking, the target falls underneath the camera and the screen goes black. Gavin clicks to the next frame, and the image is back on, Davis back to walking along.

“What the fuck?” Michael breathes, shoving Gavin’s hand off the keyboard and going back to scroll through the frames again himself. He snorts. “This doesn’t tell us anything.”

“What are you on about?” Gavin asks. “This is great! It’s a bloody lead!”

Michael throws himself backwards into his seat. “A _lead_? You think a camera fucking up for a fraction of a second is a _lead_?”

“What if it’s not bollocksed up, though? What if it was by design?” Gavin asks, eyes wide and grin full of teeth. Michael raises an eyebrow and looks at him sidelong. “It could have been tampered with, yeah?”

Michael snorts again, and crosses his arms. Part of him – and it’s a part he’s very carefully trying to tamp down – hates to deny Gavin this, when clearly he thinks they’re on the right track, but the rest of him is looking at that footage and all he can see is a coincidence, an old security cam at a run-down warehouse. “It’s just a camera fucking up, Gavin,” he tells him again.

Gavin slumps a little in his chair, disappointed, but it lasts all of a few seconds as he replays the frame-by-frame before he jerks upright again. “No, look! The shadows jump!” Michael leans in close, and god help them, but Gavin’s right. The shadows get a touch too long after the break for them to ignore it.

“Fuck,” he breathes, and Gavin takes that as the victory he wants.

“See? It _could_ be a mistake. But it _could_ also be something else.” Gavin swivels his chair around. “Right, Geoff?”

“Oh come on,” Michael snaps, whirling around as well, but Geoff is shrugging.

“Worth checking out, boys,” Geoff tells them.

“For fuck’s sake, Geoff,” Michael complains, but Gavin is already up and out of his seat and scrabbling for equipment and his field clothes.

“Sorry, but Gavin’s right. Consider this your due diligence. Ryan, get set up for the boys.” Michael is wordless, but Gavin is grinning when he holds out Michael’s suitcase to him.

“Trust me, Michael,” Gavin says, and he taps his free fingertips on the corner of his eye. “My eyesight is better than perfect. I know something is up, here.”

It’s the confidence – cockiness, perhaps? – that really makes Michael okay with this, in the end. Gavin’s eyes are bright and he’s light on his feet, stripping down to his underclothes and pulling on his field uniform without the slightest bit of hesitation or embarrassment. He clearly believes he’s right about this, even though Michael is sure he isn’t. But here Gavin is, asking for Michael to trust him, to do this together, and looking at Gavin holding out his gear for him makes Michael realise that he _does_ trust him. Hell, right now, there’s no one he trusts more.

He takes the suitcase, and Gavin’s beaming face is worth it.

 

* * *

 

Gavin wants to take the helicopter. He sulks the entire time Jack explains why he can’t, and it’s only when Michael shoves him into the back seat of the SUV and clambers in after him that his face cracks a tiny smile. Michael can see that he’s trying to rein his face back in, buckling his seatbelt and crossing his arms as though the decision not to take the chopper is being taken as a personal insult, but Michael can also see the little glances being sent his way as he leans back in his own seat next to him. It’s so hard not to laugh at Gavin, it really is, but he looks so put out and it’s clear that he’s desperate for Michael to agree with him.

It fills Michael with warmth, and that’s reason enough to stop this right now.

“Stop being a whiny little bitch, Gavin,” Michael snaps. “It’s a three hour car trip, for fuck’s sake. Get over it.”

It doesn’t have the effect he wants. Instead, Gavin’s face breaks into a full grin, and he uncrosses his arms to reach over and pat Michael’s arm. Michael shakes him off, but Gavin just laughs, and leans back to his own side of the car. “I’m not mad, Michael,” Gavin tells him. “I just wanted to jump out of the helicopter with you again.”

At this, Michael actually snorts. “It was pretty fun,” he admits slowly, and Gavin’s whole face lights up. Michael clears his throat. “But if anything weird is actually happening up in Dallas, don’t you think two guys jumping out of a helicopter might cause someone to notice? The car is way more subtle.” If he’d thought that would stop Gavin’s excitement, he was terribly wrong. Rather, the fact that Michael seems to be taking this seriously just encourages him more.

Michael has three hours to Dallas of Gavin chattering away to regret his mistake, three hours to feel fondness and affection rise up his chest to his throat until it’s nearly choking him. When at last they arrive, SUV pulling up and giving them time to check their gloves and the straps of their gun holsters, Michael doesn’t think he’s ever been as glad to get out of a car and away from its other occupant as he is right now. Gavin clearly either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, because in an instant he’s beside him and straightening Michael’s thigh holster while Michael is distracted refitting his earpiece.

It takes him a moment too long to shove Gavin’s hands away. “Get off.”

“I’m just _checking_ Michael,” Gavin murmurs, still standing too close, but like every time they hit the field together Gavin’s tone has changed to all-business. “We have to be careful, I don’t want anything going wrong out here. Can you check me?” he asks. Michael wants to tell him no, wants to snort and shove his whole body away and be done with it, but Gavin’s right. They can’t go putting themselves in danger just because Michael is scared of his little...whatever this thing is with Gavin.

“Yeah, whatever,” he huffs, and twirls his finger. “Go on then, turn around, let me look at you.” If Gavin’s voice is professional, his face isn’t when he grins and winks, and his body isn’t when he spreads his arms and spins slowly. Michael can feel heat rising in his face, and he wants to leave it there when Gavin stands still again, but he can’t. He just can’t. “Come here.”

Gavin obeys, and steps in for Michael to reach out and readjust his belt in turn. Gavin has put it on twisted – because of course he has – so Michael unbuckles it and reaches around to twist it back into shape. He keeps his eyes and hands firmly on the job, but he can feel his heart pounding. For the one brief, tiny moment when he glances up to Gavin’s face, he can see the soft, affectionate smile and Gavin’s eyes locked on Michael’s chest, exactly where his heart is trying to leap through his rib cage. Michael rebuckles Gavin’s belt and tightens it up, pats him on the shoulder once for good measure, and then steps back, reaching for his earpiece.

“We’re here,” Michael says into it, and gets an affirmative from Geoff back through it.

“Keep your eyes out, boys,” Geoff tells them. “This might be nothing, but it might be something. Be careful.”

Michael flicks a meaningful look at Gavin, who smiles and nods once. “Right, let’s go,” he orders, and Gavin falls in beside him as they walk the final few blocks to the warehouse. “This is your play, what do you think we’re looking for, here?”

Gavin shrugs. “Anything that looks like it was done on purpose. I don’t know why the footage was messed up, but there’s something wrong here, Michael.”

“You think maybe Davis suspects something?” Michael asks lowly as they reach the building and turn to put their backs to the red brick wall.

Gavin hums. “I think everyone who finds themselves on the end of a CIA hit list suspects something, Michael,” he murmurs back. “The question is, how much does he suspect? Did he do something to the camera? Was there something on that footage he didn’t want us to see?”

Michael doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he quick ducks his head around the building’s corner, and glances around. There’s no one there, at least as far as he can tell, but he can see the security camera that caused this whole mess to begin with. Still watching the space, he blindly reaches behind him to grab Gavin, ready to pull him forwards. It’s with dawning personal horror that he realises that all he managed was to capture Gavin’s fingers, but by the time he figures that out Gavin has taken firm hold of him, and it would be difficult to disentangle from him now.

So Michael grits his teeth, squeezes his fingers, and turns around the corner, muttering, “Come on,” to Gavin as he pulls him along behind. Gavin doesn’t protest, doesn’t even speak. He’s slack-jawed, staring down at their entwined fingers. Michael stubbornly doesn’t understand it – it’s not the first time their hands have been together, and with their gloves on there’s not even any of the usual electrical fizz of skin-on-skin that might warrant Gavin’s reaction.

Michael pulls him over until they’re almost below the security camera. “What do you know about these?” he asks, and finally Gavin’s eyes pull away from their hands and focus back on the job.

“Not much,” he admits quietly. “I don’t even really know what we’re looking for, or how to tell if we found it.”

“Oh, you found it,” a voice drawls from behind them, and as one they whirl. Michael’s free hand goes for his pistol, and he gets it out to raise it just when he realises the voice belongs to Davis, and Davis is aiming a gun of his own. Michael and Gavin both freeze. “Glad you got my message.”

Gavin’s hand rips out of his and shoves Michael down – _again!_ – and Michael has just enough time before he hits the ground to think two things.

The first is this – they’ve been set up. Davis lured them here.

The second is this – Gavin needs a _serious_ talking to about this penchant for _fucking shoving him_.

Then he crashes down and his gun is knocked from his hands, skidding across concrete past Gavin and out of reach, and the breath is sucked right out of his lungs when his back connects with the ground. He gasps – or tries to – and tries to struggle up, but can barely move. Gavin has already torn off towards Davis, ducking and weaving as though that can save him from a bullet. Davis’ hands track him with his gun, and Michael is just trying to scream a warning when Gavin spins and tilts, leg striking out as he completes the turn and kicking the gun out of Davis’ hands with the sole of his boot.

Michael’s eyes bug. Davis shouts and reels backwards, catches himself before he goes too far, shifts his weight and pivots to kick out himself, high. It would catch Gavin in the throat, except Gavin has already ducked and caught his weight on his hands to arc his leg over the concrete to sweep Davis’ ankle and foot out from under him. Davis drops and Michael thinks that’s that, but he tucks and rolls back and up to his feet in an instant.

Davis charges. He becomes a flurry of carefully timed and perfectly controlled feet and fists, elbows and knees. Every move he makes, Gavin blocks, and Michael hasn’t ever seen Gavin so _in control_ of his own body before. Where is this coming from? This is _Gavin_ , who can’t turn around without running into a doorway or a desk, who Michael has seen trip over exactly _nothing_ , but here his face is calm, brow wrinkled just a touch in concentration, arms blocking everything and body moving like fluid to duck and dodge. Then Davis punches hard at Gavin’s head, and both of Gavin’s wrists come up to block. It leaves him completely blind and unprotected, and a moment later Davis is driving his knee into Gavin’s gut.

Gavin grunts, and Davis’ knee comes up again, throwing Gavin’s weight over it before shoving, and Gavin goes down, shoulders first. Michael has regained enough breath to shout, but Gavin’s hands shoot out and push him back up and over, cartwheeling, before he throws himself back to his feet and into a backflip for good measure to move out of range. He lands back on his feet, solidly, and straightens, smirking, and all the air is sucked right back out of Michael’s lungs again.

Michael’s veins are on fire, his whole body is buzzing watching this, and it’s only when he hears, “Michael, what the _fuck_ is going on?” through his earpiece that he can shake it off.

“Davis, Davis is here, Gavin’s—Gavin is fighting him!” Michael manages through a half-closed throat.

“ _You have him there?_ ” Geoff yells.

“Y-Yeah,” Michael gasps, groaning and rolling to his side to try and push himself up.

“ _Fucking kill him, Michael!_ I don’t give a shit how, just kill him. Right now!”

And that’s enough permission for Michael to need. In the time it takes Michael to go through the conversation, and struggle to his feet, Gavin and Davis have clashed again, but Michael can see the knees to Gavin’s middle have winded him, and his face is now strained. Michael tries to go for his gun, and realises it’s too far for him to hobble, so he turns back to the fight.

“Gavin,” he tries to shout. His voice is raspy, barely makes a sound. He clears his throat and tries again. “Gavin! _Shoot him!_ Shoot him _now_!” He knows Gavin has heard by the stiffening of his shoulders as he ducks a wide, arcing punch, and steps back to right himself. Michael has no way of knowing if Davis has heard, too, but he’s still swinging. Gavin leans back to avoid a vicious kick to the side of his head, then twists and utterly slams his boot into Davis’ gut to send him flying. Davis crashes to the ground and groans, struggling to his feet, but by then Gavin has pulled out a gun of his own, and aimed it. Davis manages all of one step before Gavin fires, Davis drops, and Michael pulls in the first full breath he’s managed since Gavin shoved him down.

As soon as Gavin is confident Davis isn’t getting back up, he whirls and jogs to Michael’s side. Michael is just staring at him – now that the danger is passed, all he can think about is Gavin fighting, how incredible it was and how unexpected, and _god_ , how amazing Gavin had looked cartwheeling and backflipping out of the way. Gavin’s hands grab Michael’s shoulders to steady him, and it’s like the touch is setting Michael’s body on fire all over again. “H-How did you--” Michael tries to ask, eyes wide and mouth slack.

“What?” Gavin asks, intelligently.

“How did you learn to _fight_ like that?” Michael finally gets out, and Gavin chuckles.

“Michael, I did military training too, you tosser.”

“Yeah, but it’s _you_ , you suck at everything! But that was awesome, that was fucking _hot_.” And Gavin actually bursts into full laughter at that, and smoothes his hands down Michael’s arms, trailing fire with him. Michael grins and stands up straighter, but the movement spikes pain in his ribs where he’d landed, so he gasps and winces, clutching at his side.

“Are you alright, Michael?” Gavin asks, all concern now. Michael growls.

“No, I’m not alright.” He shakes Gavin’s hands off him, tries not to show his utter crushing dismay at the loss, and punches Gavin in the upper arm. Gavin yelps and laughs in surprise. “You _shoved_ me. What the fuck? Why do you keep _doing that_? _”_

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says. “I just... I have to keep you safe.”

“What the fuck does _that_ mean?” Michael snarls. “ _You’re_ the fucking Sentinel, you’re the important one!”

Gavin’s eyes widen dramatically, and he carefully reaches out to curl a finger under Michael’s chin and keep their eyes locked. He shakes his head. “No, Michael. The _Guide_ is the important one. Sentinels, we’re... We’re _nothing_ without Guides. We’re useless, utterly, utterly useless. But you Guides, you mean _everything_. And I will absolutely continue keeping you safe, Michael.” His voice is low, intense, and Michael somehow believes every single word. He can feel the point where Gavin’s gloved knuckle is pressed under his chin, he can feel Gavin’s breath mingling with his, can almost feel both of their thumping, pounding hearts.

Maybe it’s adrenaline, maybe it’s familiarity, maybe it’s just confusion or stupidity or circumstance, Michael doesn’t know. But those words – ‘you mean _everything’_ – that does it, that completely ruins Michael, and he smacks Gavin’s hand away from him. Gavin goes to step back in surprise, but Michael doesn’t let him. His hand snakes behind Gavin’s neck and his fingers scrape through the hair on his nape to tug him forwards and down, and Michael surges upwards and kisses him.

Michael doesn’t know if he expected Gavin to reject it, or hesitate, but Gavin does neither of those things. His hands go straight for Michael’s hips, sliding around to the small of his back to pull him closer. Michael gasps, or groans, or both, and Gavin presses the advantage, and _god it’s perfect_.

And then Michael hears a desperate and static-filled, “ _Michael_?” in his ear, and all at once he realises what he’s doing and where he is and _who with_ , and he jerks away. There’s a very long moment where Gavin and Michael stare at each other, and Michael just _knows_ that the fear and ache and _hope_ of it all that he sees on Gavin’s face is reflected in his. He can almost feel the air shift around Gavin’s body as he tenses, Michael just _knows_ he’s going to make the step back to him, so Michael beats him to it and steps back again, and turns away, finger flying to his ear. He only hopes Gavin hadn’t seen the soul-crushing _agony_ that the motion caused him.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Thank _fuck_. What happened?”

“Gavin got him,” Michael murmurs, resolutely not glancing over his shoulder. He doesn’t want to know how Gavin is looking at him right now. His guilt and imagination is enough.

“You alright?” Geoff asks, and Michael can feel the concern. “You sound a little off.” Great. Michael knows Gavin is listening in through his own earpiece, and this is the last thing he wants to be discussing.

“I’m fine,” Michael assures him. “I took a hit.” _Gavin shoved me, because he wants to protect me. I mean everything._ “I’m totally fine, boss.” He does glance over at Gavin now – Gavin looks pained, confused, everything Michael had expected. “Gavin is fine, too,” he lies. Or... Is it a lie? The parts Geoff cares about – Gavin is uninjured, Michael supposes.

“Good, good,” Geoff answers. “Alright, come back, we’ll see you soon.” Michael hums, and turns to face Gavin completely. His eyes, though, those he keeps firmly on the ground.

“Let’s go,” he tells Gavin, and turns to go.

“Michael,” Gavin calls after him, and it’s broken, it’s so broken, Michael has _broken him_. Michael whirls back.

All the things he wants to say – _I’m sorry, please, Gavin, I want you, I need you, I’m_ sorry! – he shoves deep, deep inside and turns it into, “Come on. We have to go.”

The three hours in the SUV back to Austin are made in frosty silence.

 

* * *

 

Throughout the entire congratulatory talk from Geoff and Jack, throughout the whole debrief, the report-writing, the case filing and all the rest of the bullshit paperwork, throughout receiving their next case and wordlessly starting on the basic research for it, Michael feels Gavin’s eyes on him like a hot brand trailing itself over his skin. Their conversation is stilted, to the point – work only – and it must be obvious to everyone. They very carefully don’t touch each other – Michael doesn’t think he could stay sane, isn’t quite sure if he’s sane now if he’s completely honest – but Michael can feel the hum of his skin so close to him all the time.

He wants so badly to turn to Gavin and pull him close and _keep him there_ , but Michael has been fighting against biology for years, and he’ll be damned if he throws everything away now to be with a _Sentinel_ , let alone one that will inevitably have to go back to the UK, and drag his Guide back with him.

“What happened between you and Gavin?” Ray finally asks one morning when Michael hesitates outside the office building. He’s stopped driving Gavin to and from work, and it’s painfully obvious they don’t look at each other when one or the other of them arrives or leaves. Michael heaves a sigh.

“Nothing. Or, something stupid, I guess?” Michael admits. “Whatever, it’s not important.”

Ray doesn’t call out that lie. “Shame,” he says instead. “You two were finally getting close, you made good friends.”

“Yeah, well, Guides aren’t friends with Sentinels,” Michael murmurs bitterly, and that shuts Ray up.

But it’s hard. God, it’s hard every single fucking day. It’s agony sitting next to him, carefully not touching, ignoring the stares and concern from the other Hunters, trying to keep voices steady. It’s agony, and it’s _exhausting_. And every night when Michael finally gets home, he strips from his suit and clambers into a white tee and black sweatpants, and crashes down on his couch before he falls asleep to do it all again the next day.

Except this night. This night, someone knocks on his door when he’s barely half a beer down. He groans and pushes himself upright, and he feels so sullen and wrecked that he doesn’t even check the peephole and opens the door to, “Gavin.” _Idiot, idiot, always check the peephole, never show anyone where you live you fucking moron_. “What..?”

Gavin’s stance looks like he wants nothing more than to be looking at the floor and mumbling, but he’s trembling and his face is firm while he meets Michael’s eyes. “Can we talk?” he asks. Michael almost tells him no, but Gavin’s got way more guts coming here than Michael has ever shown, the least he can do is invite him in.

Carefully, Michael steps to the side. “Okay,” he says, and lets Gavin pass through the doorway. Gavin moves like he did that first time, slowly and carefully to stand awkwardly in the living room. Michael glances at his own half-drunk bottle on the coffee table where he’d left it. “Um. Beer?”

Gavin debates that for a second. “Probably best to not, yeah?” he finally answers, moving across the room to seat himself on the couch. Michael follows, carefully, and perches on the other end of the couch – maybe closer than he should have, he belatedly thinks – and picks his beer back up.

“Do you mind if I..?” Michael asks, lifting the beer in question.

“Oh. Um. No, no, not at all,” Gavin answers, and Michael takes a swig and leans back. He hopes he looks calmer and more together than he feels.

“So,” Michael begins slowly after a long silence.

“So,” Gavin agrees, and then pauses to laugh, embarrassed. “Maybe I should have asked for the beer after all.” Wordlessly, Michael stands and moves to the kitchen to fetch one for him. “Cheers,” Gavin murmurs, and takes a sip, then sighs. “Michael...”

“Look,” Michael huffs. “You clearly had something you wanted to say, so just... Just say it. Fuck.”

“I miss you,” Gavin admits breathily, and Michael’s heart leaps into his throat. “But I... What _was_ that, Michael, that day, with Davis? What was that about?”

Michael’s had some time to think about that very thing, himself. ‘That’ was affection, at its simplest. It was fondness, attraction, and desperation, it was the feeling of connection and _rightness_ of a Sentinel who was a colleague, a _friend_ , and of all the fucking things, there was probably a little bit of love or something in there, if only Michael knew what love was supposed to feel like. But the warmth Michael had felt watching Gavin fight, the heart-pounding skin-fizzing pure _emotion_ of hearing Gavin say it – you mean _everything_ – that’s what it was. It was Michael realising that actually, no, _Gavin means everything_ , and Michael had just done the first thing he could think of that showed it.

He doesn’t say that. Instead, he says, “Adrenaline,” and he knows Gavin can sense the lie like he can sense every other thing Michael is feeling. It’s a credit to Gavin – _another credit_ – that he doesn’t call him out on it. Gavin does smile, soft and small, eyes down and focused on his beer, but he doesn’t speak. After a very long silence, Michael manages to choke out, “I miss you, too,” and Gavin’s face slowly lights up again. “We’re not working well together right now.”

Gavin laughs, surprised. “Too bloody right.” He grins shyly up at Michael, running his thumb around the bottle rim. They fall quiet again, silence a little strained, until Gavin asks, “So, tell me more about that guy you met in the park when you were young?” And Michael is so fucking glad they’re not going to dwell on the reason Gavin is actually here.

He laughs. “I was so young, I had no idea about Guides or Sentinels or any of it. All I could think at the time was how _pissed_ I was that he hadn’t even thanked me for stopping him staring at the damn sky for the rest of the day.”

Gavin smiles. “I can’t believe you didn’t go looking up the stuff he was talking about.”

Michael knocks back another swig of beer. “Dude, I didn’t care. I was eleven. He was just a weird, rude guy in the park.”

“Christ. When I heard the word ‘Sentinel’ for the first time, I booked it right to a computer and started reading about it _immediately_.”

“I did that when I realised they were talking about things I was feeling,” Michael reminds him, smiling softly. Gavin turns to him on the couch and Michael feels a joint thrill of warmth having Gavin’s entire focus on him, and fear because this was a mistake, this is what got them into this mess to begin with. It’s all he can do to shake the feeling off, silently remind himself he _cannot have a Sentinel_ , go get them some more beers, and change the subject.

It must be nearly an hour and a half – and two beers – later that Michael leans back into the couch and murmurs, “Do you... Do you think you’ll ever have a Guide?”

Gavin doesn’t choke on his beer, but it looks a near thing. “Uh, I guess? I mean, I’d like one, I think, but... You know, Guides, Sentinels, we’re pretty rare.” Michael hums. “And it would be a lot to give up. I’ve worked hard for this bloody job, I’ve sacrificed a lot.”

That makes Michael sit up. “What?”

Gavin looks at him in surprise. “You know, I’ve put years of my life into this, Michael--”

“No, no,” Michael interrupts. “What do you mean it’s a lot to give up?”

Gavin blinks. “Well, I... I mean, if I had a Guide I’d have to give up MI6. I’d go where the Guide goes.”

Michael flushes hot, and he can’t tell if that’s anger or fear or something much, much worse, like hope. “You’re a fucking Sentinel, Gavin, you get to do what you’re doing. The Guide follows _you_.”

“What?” Gavin chirps. “No.” It comes out as a surprised laugh. “I’m the limiting factor, Michael. I’m the problem. My Guide would already have to be keeping an eye on me, I’m not about to tell them to uproot their whole damn life just for me as well. I can use my powers anywhere.”

Michael’s mouth is dry. His heart is pounding and he can barely breathe, and Gavin is sitting there on his couch telling him that everything he’d ever worried about isn’t something he needs to worry about with _Gavin_. He tries to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat, and only just manages to put his beer down. “Would you...really do that? Stay with your Guide, no matter what they were, or where they were?”

“Yeah,” Gavin murmurs, “If that’s what they wanted,” and when Michael lifts his eyes to stare at him, Gavin is staring right back.

“And me?” Michael whispers, trembling. “If I wanted to be your Guide, would you let me? Would you stay with _me_?”

“Michael, you already know the answer to that.” It’s like a wall breaking. Every single feeling Michael has forced himself not to feel comes crashing in, it’s basically the one big thing that was holding Michael back, and he barely manages to keep himself steady to move across the couch and swing his knee over Gavin to sit firmly, straddled on his thighs, barely manages to stop his hands from shaking as he takes Gavin’s cheeks – stubble and all – to pull him in to kiss him firmly.

One of Gavin’s hands comes up to hold the back of Michael’s head close, the other curls around his back, and Michael lets out a soft, broken and desperate moan. When they part for air, Gavin doesn’t let him pull away far, keeps their lips so close they’re only just hovering. “Christ, Michael,” Gavin whispers. “Don’t run away from me this time, please,” and Michael shakes his head and pecks his lips and shakes his head again.

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise,” and he sounds just as broken when he begs, “Stay with me, promise you’ll try to stay with me.”

Gavin nods desperately. “Yeah, yeah,” he agrees fervently, and then leans back in to kiss Michael again. The feel of Gavin’s stubble on his chin, on his cheek, and the taste of Gavin’s tongue laced with beer curls warm in Michael’s belly, already tinged with the first sharp spikes of desperation. He tilts his head away just enough to let him pull his tee over his head, and Gavin’s hands shoot right to his hips with a matching groan.

Gavin’s hips are shifting under him already, making tiny thrusts upwards to rub tight denim over Michael’s ass while his hands pull Michael’s hips to make him grind downwards. Michael manages to get one hand under Gavin’s button-up, scratching nails over abs and up higher to card them roughly through chest hair, the other fumbling lower to undo Gavin’s belt and tease at the skin around the top of his jeans.

“Christ,” Gavin gasps, and Michael catches Gavin’s lower lip with his teeth, growling encouragement when Gavin’s own hand finds the band of his sweatpants and slips in to cup a cheek and squeeze. Michael rolls his hips down to meet it, and jerks them forwards when Gavin’s hand moves to slip a finger down to tease his ass.

“Oh, fuck,” Michael breathes shakily, and tears his hands out of Gavin’s shirt to grab the front of it instead. “C’mon, Gav, bed, c’mon.”

Gavin laughs, and it’s _beautiful_ , carefully heaving Michael off his lap and letting Michael curl their fingers together to tug him up off the couch and across the apartment to the bedroom. Michael doesn’t even care how desperate he looks when he turns and all but throws himself down onto the bed, dragging Gavin down over him, because the look Gavin gives him is so _warm_ as he slots himself around Michael’s legs and leans down to kiss him again. Michael’s hands fly to the buttons on Gavin’s shirt, and Gavin’s knee drags itself closer to Michael’s crotch to better shift his weight forwards.

Michael basically leaps to the opportunity, shifting his hips to rub against Gavin’s thigh – _fuck, yes, no shame at all I don’t give a fuck_ – and one of Gavin’s hands shifts to his hips to guide them while he twists down to nip at Michael’s jaw, suck at Michael’s throat. The shirt buttons come undone and Gavin straightens up to pull it off his shoulders, and all Michael’s hands can seem to find is Gavin’s undone belt to pull it through belt loops and toss it aside. His fingernails scrape lightly over Gavin’s stomach, through hair that trails right down below the band of his jeans, and Michael feels so keenly frustrated at it that his hands shake as he tugs at button and fly to follow the line of that hair down, down further, into underwear.

Gavin bats his hands away with a grin and pulls back to grab Michael’s sweatpants and tug them. And nothing Gavin does is graceful. He gets them halfway down before he has to shift, and lifts one knee to move only to topple sideways, sweatpants coming with him, and rolls clear off the bed, landing heavily on the floor. It’s a surprise, sure, but it’s so like Gavin that Michael bursts into laughter, which only strengthens when Gavin murmurs, “Aw, Michael,” so _forlornly_ , and moments later his face appears over the edge of the bed with the most incredible puppy eyes Michael has ever seen.

“Fuck, you’re a goddamn idiot,” Michael tells him, but it’s said on the right side of affectionate, and Gavin’s face lights up. Michael thinks he could get used to that look. He gestures Gavin over. “Come here,” he murmurs, smiling, and Gavin obeys, crawling back over to lay a soft, sweet kiss on Michael’s lips.

Gavin trails his kisses down over Michael’s chin, down over his throat and down lower, over pale chest and to just below his navel. Michael has just enough time to hope his lips keep moving down when Gavin’s eyes flick up to meet his, and he grins, and skips down all the way to Michael’s knees.

Michael props himself up on his elbows to watch Gavin kissing the insides of his thighs. “You fuck,” he whispers, not at all angry, and then falls silent while Gavin slowly – _fuck, so slowly_ – makes his way upwards. By the time Gavin is hovering over his groin, Michael is hard and trembling, fingers clenching and unclenching in sheets. “Gav,” he murmurs, and Gavin grins again and leans in to kiss along his entire length to the head, before pulling away. Michael groans and falls back onto the bed. “You _fuck_ ,” he repeats, and this time it’s a little more venomous.

Gavin laughs and moves back up, perching himself between Michael’s legs and leaning over his face. “Lube?” he asks. Michael sighs and gestures to the side.

“In the drawer, asshole,” he says, and Gavin leans further over to scrabble for it.

“I really like you, Michael,” Gavin murmurs, uncapping the lube and squeezing it over his fingers. Michael snorts.

“Yeah, yeah. Shut up, c’mon.” Gavin kisses him again and slides his slick fingers down over Michael’s hips to dance over his ass. “ _Gavin_ ,” Michael groans, pulling at Gavin’s forearm, and Gavin obeys, slipping one finger inside. Michael’s eyelids flutter, his breath hitches, his heart thumps, and he can see Gavin catch all of it with his eyes, his ears, his skin, and tilt back in to capture Michael’s soft, breathy, needy whimpers with his own lips.

Michael doesn’t know where to focus, doesn’t think his mind _can_ focus between Gavin’s tongue and Gavin’s fingers, and he can’t decide where to keep his hands, scraping through Gavin’s hair on his scalp or on his chest, or scratching down his arms or back. Gavin twists to suck an earlobe in between his teeth, and Michael moans, broken. His hands shoot to Gavin’s jeans and tug. “C’mon, c’mon, off, please, let’s go, c’m _on_.”

There’s no laughter this time, just slick fingers pumping and scissoring inside him and soothing hushes in his ear until Gavin pulls away to throw off his jeans and underwear. When he returns to the bed, his hands clench on Michael’s waist to pull him in close, and Michael doesn’t hesitate to throw his knees up for him. “ _Gavin_.”

Gavin growls, slicking himself up, and Michael’s hand goes straight down to circle his dick and guide it into himself. It sucks the air clear from his lungs, Gavin whispering, “Christ, _Christ_ ,” the deeper he slides, “Christ, _Michael_ , it’s perfect, you’re perfect,” and he’s right, fuck, he’s right.

Gavin doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause, doesn’t even hesitate, just bends down over Michael’s chest and holds himself upright with a hand by his side and another by his head, and rolls his hips away, and then back. Michael feels it all the way up his spine, curling into his chest, and everywhere their skin touches it fizzes and pops, and Michael knew something like this would happen but didn’t expect to feel it everywhere, _inside and out_ , and nothing he’s ever felt has been like this. This is ruining him, utterly ruining him, and feeling Gavin everywhere he is and hearing his heavy, harsh breathing over him, around him, makes it perfectly obvious he’ll never be able to have anyone else ever again. And he doesn’t mind at all.

Michael somehow tries to make this known, but all he gets out is babbles and pleas, and Gavin is gasping, “I’ve got you, Michael, I’ve got you,” and Michael is torn between grinding as much as he can into Gavin’s hips and twisting the other way to thrust into his own hand when it drops to squeeze around himself. He’s going crazy, shaking and whimpering and coming apart, and it’s made all the worse when Gavin’s hand shifts from the bed by his side to cover his hand around his dick and pump with it.

“Fuck, Gavin, _please, oh fuck--_ ” Michael begs, free hand grabbing at Gavin’s ass to pull him in closer, harder with each thrust of his hips, and Gavin’s mouth is at his ear, groaning and panting, hot and wet, consuming him completely.

“Come on, my lovely Michael, come on.”

And Michael is close, he’s so _close_ , he can hear himself keening, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “S-Say it again, Gav, _please_.”

“What?”

“Tell me I-I’m – tell me I mean – I mean--”

And somehow, Gavin figures it out from that, and his lips hit Michael’s ear. “You mean _everything_ ,” he whispers desperately, and Michael sobs and hiccups and comes between both of their fingers, hips stuttering and body jerking. And Gavin’s lips find his, and his hips lose all sense of rhythm and he groans into Michael’s mouth. His hips stop moving and he slumps down onto Michael’s chest with a huff.

Michael manages to wriggle his arm out from between them to stroke soothingly down Gavin’s back, watching the skin and muscles quiver beneath his fingertips. Gavin groans tiredly, and Michael smiles against his jaw. “Do you still want to bond with me?” Gavin whispers, and it sounds scared and hopeful and so, so vulnerable.

“More than anything,” Michael answers him softly, and it’s absolutely true. “I... I didn’t want to know how to do it,” he admits, “I don’t know what to do.”

Gavin groans again and props himself up to look him in the eye. “I need a knife.” That, admittedly, is a surprise, but Michael doesn’t question it, just reaches up under his pillow and pulls out his own. Gavin’s eyes widen. “Really?”

“I’m a CIA agent, Gavin,” Michael says by way of explanation.

“You couldn’t have a damn bloody gun under there like a normal American?”

Michael laughs. “And risk it going off during the night? Nuh uh. Now do you want the fucking knife or not?” He holds it out, and Gavin takes it, slowly.

“Hold out your wrist,” Gavin murmurs, and Michael obeys, letting Gavin turn it so the back of it is exposed. “Are you _sure_?” he asks again, and Michael stares at him.

“You already know the answer to that,” he answers with a smile, and watches as Gavin rubs the skin on the back of his wrist with a thumb, before following it carefully, but surely, with the blade of the knife.

Michael hisses, but doesn’t pull away. Gavin turns the knife onto himself, the back of his own wrist, and puts the knife aside when they have matching lines of dripping red spilling over their skin. And then, without any hesitation or worry or question, Gavin slots their wounds together, lets their blood mingle, and it’s like floodgates open.

It feels right. It feels _perfect_. And above all, it feels like Michael is finally, _finally_ whole in places he didn’t realise he was empty. Gavin leans in and kisses him, and Michael is _happy_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being so patient waiting for this! I had a Masters Thesis to finish. I hope the longer chapter (and its contents) make it worth the wait.


	5. Don't Leave Me to Sleep All Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is exactly what I knew would happen,” Michael spits. “I stop getting put on the jobs I’m actually good at, and end up babysitting you.”

Michael wakes slowly, buried under his comforter. The first thing he notices is how relaxed he is, how warm and cosy he feels. The next thing he notices is the dull throbbing starting up from his wrist where Gavin had taken the knife to his skin to bond them. It’s just as he recognises that pain that he also realises that _something_ is pulling at his wrist from outside his room, as though a fine string has been sewn through his skin and down into his very core, tugging and connecting him to something else. Instinctively, Michael knows this is Gavin, and at the very moment he puts this into thought, the connection – _the bond_ – thrums warm and with a sudden awareness, and Michael can’t help but smile and bury himself further into his bed.

Only a few seconds later, his bedroom door opens, and Michael peeps out from under his comforter to look at Gavin in the doorway. Gavin’s hair is damp and he’s dressed back into his jeans and shirt from last night. His smile is soft and warm and reflected in his eyes, and Michael can only smile wider in response back at him.

“Morning,” Gavin murmurs. “How are you feeling?”

Michael’s wrist twinges, and the invisible connection pulling him towards Gavin twangs silently, feeling like a guitar string that’s been plucked. Concern, maybe, Michael thinks, judging by the hesitation in Gavin’s words and tone. “Good,” Michael reassures him, moving to sit up. He lifts his hand to show his wrist. “I didn’t expect... Well, I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.”

Gavin’s face warms further with humour, and he walks over to sit on the edge of the bed next to Michael. “It’s odd, isn’t it?” Gavin agrees. “I knew the moment you woke up. We’ll be able to sense each other through this, even if we’re apart. And,” he adds, “look at this.” Gavin reaches out to lightly stroke his fingertips down Michael’s arm. The fizzing of skin on skin Michael has come to expect doesn’t start, and he stares at Gavin’s fingers as they slide down to his wrist, scabbed over.

“Nothing,” he murmurs, and Gavin hums agreement.

“The feeling is designed to help Guides and Sentinels recognise each other at first. But now that we’re bonded, we’ll need something else.” Gavin turns his wrist over and lines up his own scabbed wound. Where they touch their skin crackles, more fiercely than ever before. Michael sucks in a breath, and Gavin hums again. “This is how you get me out of trances,” Gavin explains. “And it’s how I’ll soothe your emotions if you ever need that, or want that.”

Michael stares at him in surprise. “ _Will_ I need that?” he asks, and a vague itch in the back of his mind tells him that maybe he should have thought this through more. Gavin surely feels his unease, because a moment later the bond slides warm like honey through his wrist to curl in his chest, and he knows that’s an attempt at reassurance.

“Everyone does sometimes, right?” Gavin asks by way of his answer, and Michael thinks that actually, yeah, fair point. He doesn’t get to say this, because Gavin pulls his wrist away and pats Michael’s thigh through the comforter. “Come on, Michael, we have to go. We’re going to be late.”

“Shit,” Michael curses, and throws off the sheets to scramble out of bed. He glances at his phone and decides thankfully he has time for a shower, if a very quick one, and wastes no time to go about it only to pull up short when he walks back into his room with his curls dripping and sees Gavin still sitting on the edge of the bed. Gavin is smiling at him, expectant, and Michael is about to demand to know what he wants when Gavin’s eyes flick to the towel around his waist and back up again. Michael scowls.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks drily.

“What?” Gavin squawks. “I’ve already seen it all!”

“You’re a piece of shit,” Michael grumbles, but he concedes the point and sheds his towel to quickly dress in his suit, face red the entire time. Gavin is grinning and watching him like a hawk, and when Michael starts tying his tie Gavin stands and moves over to stand close in front of him. Michael’s face burns, and his wrist vibrates – humour, he can only assume from Gavin’s face.

Then Gavin is leaning in and steering his lips into a kiss, and Michael melts inside, just a little. “Asshole,” Michael mutters when Gavin pulls away, but he quickly kisses him once more in return, and then slips to the side to find his shoes.

They’re halfway to work when Michael starts to feel uncomfortable. Gavin is almost vibrating in the passenger seat, and in the corner of his eye Michael can see that Gavin keeps touching the ends of his fingers to his wrist and smiling to himself. He just _knows_ Gavin is itching to show it off the moment they arrive, and Michael doesn’t want that, he doesn’t want that _at all_.

“Hey,” Michael murmurs carefully, and Gavin glances over. Michael keeps his eyes firmly on the road, and Gavin can clearly tell he’s upset about something because his hand gently pats Michael’s thigh as he drives. It doesn’t help at all. “I know how important it is to you,” Michael starts, “but... Can we... Can we not tell people about this? Not just yet?”

He feels Gavin deflate next to him. “What? Why not?”

“Gavin,” Michael sighs. “This happened pretty quick. And like, I’m _fine_ with it, I just. I don’t want them to know. Not yet. Please, just... Can we wait? Not forever, just until I’m ready.”

Gavin’s hand squeezes on his thigh once before he pulls it away to twist his own fingers together. “You’re ‘fine with it’?” he repeats, and the hesitation in his voice and the flood of hurt that courses through the bond makes Michael wince and drive into a side street to pull over. He turns in his seat.

“Okay, not how I meant it, first of all. I’m thrilled, I’m fucking _thrilled_ , Gavin, I mean that, I am. You have no idea.” It’s word-vomit again, he knows it is, but Gavin just makes him feel so _many_ things and he feels them so _strongly_ , he can’t help himself. “I’ve been completely alone this whole time and so fucking scared, and I’m really, _really_ fucking happy I found you. So don’t think for one fucking second I’m not, okay?”

Gavin is staring and nodding, little rapid quirks of his head that can’t keep up with Michael’s rant. “Okay,” he whispers, but Michael isn’t done. Not yet.

“ _Second of all_ , the reason I don’t want them finding out just yet is because they won’t get it. They only just found out about who we are, what we’re like. To try and explain the bond as well, they’re just going to joke and laugh and tell me how quickly I fell at your fucking feet, how I fought so hard and how it was just a fucking farce and--”

Immediately, Gavin’s hands grab his and pull them over, pushes up his sleeve, and he slides their bond marks together. It’s soothing, it’s _incredibly_ soothing, and Michael feels wobbly and strung out but _okay_ , he feels _okay_ , and that’s more than he’s been for awhile. He takes a shaky breath and gently shakes Gavin’s wrist off his, and nods.

“I’m okay. I’m okay.”

“Hey,” Gavin murmurs. “We don’t have to say anything. I want to, but we won’t. Not until you’re ready.”

Michael nods again. “Thank you.” And Gavin just hums and lets Michael steer them back onto the road and towards the office.

“You go in first,” Gavin suggests when they arrive and climb out of the car, glancing at his watch. “We shouldn’t arrive together, and you shouldn’t be late again.”

Michael gives him a flat stare and deadpans, “Yeah. _I_ shouldn’t be late.” Gavin grins and flicks his head but doesn’t say anything more, so Michael tugs the end of his shirt sleeve to ensure his bond mark is covered properly, and heads inside. Kara doesn’t speak as she checks him over, but she does smile, and for the first time in a long while Michael smiles back.

When he gets into the Achievement Hunter office, he tries to greet people politely but without any emotion that would give him away. Gavin bursts into the office in a flurry a few minutes later, and Michael rolls his eyes before he can stop himself. Gavin grins and opens his mouth – _“See, this is fine!”_ Michael knows he wants to say – but he manages to catch himself and shutters his face to blank. Michael glances away and focuses on his computer, but it’s not before he feels the sudden tension from everyone else in the room.

The last few days haven’t been fair on the Hunters either, Michael realises. He and Gavin have been cold, tense, and just generally awkward around each other, and it’s hard to be in a workplace when the environment is like that. And Michael tries, he _really tries_ to make it less awkward, but he’s second guessing every single action. The case he’s working isn’t interesting – Geoff had thrown it to him and Gavin as an afterthought, something small to focus on in downtime between major whole-team events - which just means it’s harder to keep his attention on that rather than every little movement Gavin makes.

And Gavin makes a lot of movements.

He reaches over to point at Michael’s computer, smudging the screen with his fingerprints. Michael doesn’t think and gently pulls Gavin’s hand away, and they catch it at the same time, snapping their hands back to themselves and proceeding to ignore each other for minutes afterwards.

Gavin squirms in his seat and bounces his knees, and Michael keeps trying to glare at him to tell him to knock it off, but Jack’s eyes are hawk-like, and he catches the look every time.

Gavin finds something exciting in the case – which in itself is a surprise – and turns to Michael with a sharp intake of breath to let him know, only to abort the sound to make it come out strangled, and glance away again.

The tension in the air is so thick Michael thinks Ryan could carve it up. He can feel the anxiety and stress coursing through the bond, and it strengthens when Geoff sighs harshly. “Could you two just fuck and get it over with so we can all get back to work?”

Gavin chirps in surprise and Michael feels his face immediately burst into red and he hunches into himself, and suddenly neither he nor Gavin is looking at anyone and the silence that fills the room is overwhelming.

“Oh my god,” Geoff whispers. “You already did.”

“What?” Gavin shrieks. “No we didn’t!” And it’s sweet that Gavin is willing to fight it, but the matter is lost. Geoff isn’t an idiot.

“Gavin,” Michael hisses.

Ray bursts into laughter and Michael spins to glare at him, and suddenly Geoff is laughing as well, then Jack, and Ryan isn’t laughing but he looks fucking thrilled. “This is awesome,” Ray crows.

“ _We didn’t!_ ” Gavin insists, and that just makes Geoff laugh harder, wheezing and sliding from his chair to the floor. “You guys are _rubbish!_ ”

“Gavin, stop,” Michael pleads, he’s just making it worse, and Gavin’s face is red as well, the room is full of laughter and Michael is just completely mortified.

“When the hell did this happen?” Jack asks around chuckles, and Gavin frowns and rubs the back of his neck. Michael feels the bond fizzing with embarrassment and nerves.

“It’s not,” Gavin tries, though his voice is small. “We’re not, it’s only just happened and we didn’t...”

“We didn’t want to bring it up,” Michael mutters. “I didn’t want you to know just yet.”

Geoff slowly stops laughing and struggles his way up off the floor, pulling Michael and Gavin both in and hugging them. Gavin looks like he enjoys it, but Michael wriggles and shoves Geoff back firmly. “I get it, Michael,” Geoff tells him when the fresh laughter dies down. “I think this is great.”

“You’re just saying that because I’m a Guide and now I’ve got a fucking Sentinel to keep me in line!” Michael snaps, and he immediately regrets giving the thought life like that. But Geoff just moves to clap his hand on his shoulder.

“No, dude, no. You two have been dancing around each other from day goddamn one, and I don’t know what happened the other day to make you both fill yourselves so full of vinegar, but I’m real fucking glad you’ve sorted it out. I think you’re going to be really good for each other, and _not_ because you’re a Guide and Gavin’s a Sentinel.”

Michael glances to Gavin, who is grinning and just generally looks like he’s so extraordinarily pleased by this whole thing. And Michael can admit it’s a nice feeling, Geoff approving of it like this, and it’s not as bad as he’d thought, and it’s probably going to be nice not having to hide it after all, terrified someone would find out. And now that the surprise and laughter has stopped, everyone expresses their support and Gavin looks at him like he’s the luckiest person in the world, and Michael manages to smile.

Things don’t really change in the office, Michael slowly finds out over the next few days. He and Gavin still argue, all the time, but it’s playful rather than vicious. Michael still tries to beat Gavin in the research race, still tries to get a better review from Geoff out of a field mission, still shoves him away and tells him to shut the fuck up whenever Gavin drapes himself over him or coos, “Aww, Michael.”

Jack pulls them aside one day and asks if there’s anything he can do to make things easier for them. “I don’t know much about Guides and Sentinels and bonds, but is there anything you need?” Gavin lights up and tells him that their uniforms need adjusting, because their bond marks have to be accessible, and it’s not always possible to stop and pull sleeves up. Jack nods thoughtfully, and goes away, and when they get back the next day he presents them with perfectly altered field gear, completely covering except for the small stretch of skin were their marks rest.

Ray insists they both come to lunch with him one day when the office is a little less frantic, and spends the first ten minutes _completely_ embarrassing Michael by crowing to Gavin about how happy he is they got their shit together and how ridiculously obvious it had been to him this whole time. He tells Gavin how insistent Michael was that _no, he was not into Gavin_ , even though he really clearly was, and while Michael’s face burns and he tells Ray to stop, Gavin’s eyes are wide and bright and pleased while he squeezes Michael’s hand below the table and strokes his fingers over Michael’s mark, hanging on Ray’s every word.

It’s difficult going home at the end of the day, Michael also figures out. The bond is constantly humming softly, pulling towards Gavin like an invisible string, so Michael knows which direction he’s in at all times. Distance seems to dull the sensations, but every now and then Michael gets a gentle pulse of warmth or a quick fizz or a tiny throbbing ache. Gavin tells him that they can actively send each other emotions through the bond – “Just _feel_ it really hard in my direction, Michael, it’s not bloody hard,” Gavin tells him, squawking when Michael kicks his calf and tells him to shut up, right now, for fuck’s sake – but Michael hasn’t gotten the hang of it, and seems to be stuck with the passive emotions for now.

It’s distracting as well, Michael thinks, because he’s constantly aware of the mark and the bond and thinking about where Gavin is and why he’s sending aches. “We’re going to have to try blocking it, sometimes,” he mutters one morning when neither of them have had any sleep, because the nerves about an upcoming mission keep bouncing back and forth across the bond. For days they work on it, and Michael thinks they _might_ be getting somewhere, maybe.

Until one night Gavin turns back up at Michael’s apartment with a suitcase and dark-rimmed eyes. Michael looks at him in the doorway with an eyebrow raised. “It’s too hard, Michael,” Gavin tells him, pushing his way in. Michael sighs and rolls his eyes, but closes the door behind him without a word. “It’s just too damn hard, it’s easier to just stay close to each other.”

Michael follows him to the bedroom and watches while Gavin sets his suitcase down and starts unpacking it. “So you just decided you’re moving in?” he asks flatly, and Gavin is grinning when he pokes his head out from the bathroom.

“Yeah! Cancelled the hotel room and everything.”

“Seriously? You asshole, you couldn’t have even asked me?” Michael demands. “Maybe I don’t want your sorry ass here.”

Gavin doesn’t answer, so Michael sits on the edge of the bed and flops backwards to wait, closing his eyes and listening to Gavin potter around in the bathroom. Gavin likes to hum as he busies himself with homey things, Michael learns in this moment, and it seems a little inconceivable that he hadn’t known this earlier. Part of him wants to kick Gavin out, along with the addictive nonsense he’s humming gently, but he actually finally feels comfortable and has to accept this is because of Gavin’s presence.

He opens his eyes again only when Gavin leaves the bathroom and moves over to him, knocking his leg on Michael’s knee softly. Gavin is smiling down at him and when Michael parts his knees – a clear invitation – the smile only widens. Gavin carefully climbs over him and leans down to lightly kiss his lips, and Michael reaches up to grab Gavin’s hips.

“You going to fuck me or what?” Michael murmurs against Gavin’s lips when he pulls away from their next kiss. Gavin gives a high-pitched laugh and pulls back further.

“Oi, what?”

“Well, I mean, you’re here, right?”

Gavin laughs again and shifts to the side a little to smooth himself out properly over Michael’s body, nuzzling his nose deep into the side of Michael’s neck. “Mm,” he agrees. “And I haven’t had a damned proper night’s sleep for days.” Michael can’t exactly argue with that – he’s had the same trouble, and even now the even throb of Gavin’s heart against his chest, the slow and soft breathing by his ear, and the gentle warm hum of contentment through the bond is making Michael’s eyelids droop. He doesn’t even bother trying to move them around the bed and under the covers before he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

That week, Geoff sends Michael and Gavin out to investigate a plutonium smuggler. Michael tries to argue with him – “We’re fucking _assassins_ , Geoff, we’re not equipped to handle bullshit like this!” – until Gavin casually lets slip that he’s taken out illegal uranium miners before and it’s kind of the same thing. Geoff calmly explains that they’re only _investigating_ , they’re not actually pretending to buy it or anything.

Michael very reluctantly takes the case, though Geoff also makes it quite clear he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. He and Gavin spend a very uncomfortable seven hours in a cramped closet on a container ship, listening through the door cracks for any information about the product or potential meeting times and locations – or, Gavin listens, and Michael spends most of the time pouting, silently huffing, and trying to fight the urge to slap Gavin’s hand away from where it’s gently holding his hip.

It honestly puts Michael into a foul mood. He stands with his arms crossed the entire time Gavin relays the information back to Geoff when they return, and doesn’t speak to anyone for the rest of the day. Later that night, when Gavin slides a hand behind his head to bring him in to kiss, Michael slips away and shoots a barb through the bond, and stalks away to the bedroom.

Gavin yelps and rubs his wrist. “What was _that_ about?” he asks as he follows.

“This is exactly what I knew would happen,” Michael spits. “I stop getting put on the jobs I’m actually good at, and end up babysitting _you_.”

Gavin frowns, and sympathy slides through their bond. Worse though, his face shows acceptance and understanding, and Michael doesn’t want that – he’s angry and he wants to fight. “I’m sorry,” he answers, and moves past Michael to sit on the bed. “But I want you to know, that wasn’t Geoff’s thought process when he gave us that job.” Michael scoffs. “It wasn’t! You’re a damned good spy, Michael, and Geoff knows that. Sometimes we’ll get your kind of jobs, but sometimes we’ll get the dull Sentinel bollocks.”

Michael sighs and sits next to him. “So, it was just bad timing?”

Gavin laughs. “Oh, it was bloody awful timing,” he agrees, and Michael finds it in himself to smile.

Sure enough, two and a half weeks later Jack gets an email from Burnie, and bursts into laughter reading it. Geoff scoots his chair over and reads it, and he cracks up as well, wheezing.

“What is it?” Gavin asks.

“Ray!” Geoff calls, ignoring Gavin completely. “Come read this!”

Ray jumps up and does read it, and chuckles. “This is the best day of my life.”

“What is it?” Gavin demands again, so Jack turns to look at him.

“You and Michael have a new job,” he tells them. “CIA target, a high-value arms dealer. Government has never been able to get a charge to stick, but he has a lot of enemies so it’s definitely feasible that he’d eventually...have a little accident.”

“What’s so funny about that?” Michael grumbles, turning his own chair around.

Geoff snickers. “The only time they think you’ll catch him off-guard is at the party he’s hosting tomorrow night. Suit up, ladies, you’re going to a ball!”

Michael groans at the very moment Gavin gasps in excitement. “Michael!” he trills. “We’re going to be like James Bond, Michael!”

Gavin loves every second of it, getting measured and finding subtle places to strap metal-free knives and climbing equipment. He squirms and coos and titters as handlers show them the high-tensile cord they can use for grappling and climbing, sewn into their belts. He spends too long arguing with Jack about how their cover story doesn’t involve the two of them dating, until Michael tells him it doesn’t matter and Gavin grins and says, “But Michael, what if I can’t keep my hands off you?” Geoff laughs, tilting on his seat, and announces it’ll definitely make a good cover if they’re found alone together, and so the story is changed.

And in the end, it does go smoothly. Their target introduces himself as part of his mingling, compliments them on how happy they look together – which Gavin utterly preens at – and they very slowly drink a single glass of champagne each while Ryan updates them constantly on their target’s position. It’s all too easy to sneak away and climb a set of stairs at the rear of the house to wait in the target’s bedroom, Michael flush against the wall behind the door and Gavin crouched on the far side of the bed.

Ryan tells them the target is on his way up, bodyguard with him. It’s just as easy, it turns out, for Gavin to leap from his hiding place and take out the bodyguard, ceramic blade digging into his ribs. Michael takes the chance before the target can respond with more than a startled attempt at a dodge to sweep his feet out from under him and throw him to the ground, and then he’s over him with a hand pressed against his mouth and his own ceramic blade against his throat.

And just as Gavin straightens and huffs with impatience, Michael digs the knife down and across, and waits with his finger on the target’s pulse while he bleeds out. When he stills, finally, and his heart stops, Michael carefully pulls away and stands up. “Target eliminated,” he says into his earpiece, and hurries to the window where Gavin is waiting, hand outstretched.

“Quickly, love,” Gavin urges, Michael fumbling with the cord in his belt, tugging it free of its thread and tying it to the plastic winch Gavin has set up for him. It’s a tall two stories, and Michael is less than graceful sliding down the building’s side with Gavin just above him. In his earpiece he can hear the other Hunters back in the office chuckling over Gavin’s endearment, but Michael can’t let that distract him, not yet. When Gavin hits the ground Michael leads him away, bent over and hurrying low to cover, around trees and behind shrubs across the massive yard before they reach the fence to scale.

In the building behind him, filtering across the yard and through the trees, an alarm sounds. Michael and Gavin are already gone.

 

* * *

 

“That went well,” Michael murmurs as he kicks off his shoes when they get home. “Geoff seemed happy with it. Jack, too.” Gavin hums, locking the apartment door behind them.

“They did,” Gavin agrees, voice low. Michael glances over, loosening his tie. Gavin is looking at him from under his eyelashes, and the heat of it pools right in Michael’s gut.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” he huffs, turning away and tossing his tie on the side table. Only a moment later, Gavin’s hand slides over his stomach and he presses up against him, moving Michael’s whole body against the wall with his.  Gavin’s palms smooth down over Michael’s shirt, falling to his hips and tracing his belt with his fingertips.

“You look really good in this suit, my little Michael,” Gavin murmurs, voice even lower, and Michael feels the rumble of it through his entire body. He leans in immediately and kisses Gavin firmly.

When Gavin tilts his head away, Michael is a little surprised, but then Gavin’s lips slide down Michael’s cheek, down his neck to his collar, down the buttons on his shirt, and Michael’s breath catches as Gavin drops heavily to his knees and lightly mouths at the groin of Michael’s slacks.

“Fuck,” Michael chokes out, and Gavin grins, unbuckles Michael’s belt and pulls his pants down just enough to free his dick. Gavin glances up through his lashes, grin fading to press open-mouthed kisses down Michael’s length. Michael shudders and lets his head fall back against the wall with a soft _thunk_. “Fuck.”

Gavin’s hands are hot on his hips, his breath even hotter as he leans in to kiss the head before opening his mouth and sinking down. Gavin’s tongue twists and he moans softly, vibrating through to Michael’s chest. Michael looks down to Gavin’s flushed face with fluttering eyelashes, and lifts his hand to cup Gavin’s jaw. Gavin hums and pulls away to kiss down to the base, breathing deeply and sighing it out. Just the sight of it makes Michael groan and shift his hips forward.

“Gav,” Michael breathes, and strokes his thumb across Gavin’s cheekbone. Gavin hums again and lifts his own hand to tangle it with Michael’s, draws it away from his cheek and slides Michael’s hand into his hair at the back of his head. Michael’s fingernails scratch gently over Gavin’s scalp, and Gavin’s fingers tighten over Michael’s as he sinks his mouth back down over Michael’s dick, pushing his own head forward via Michael’s hand for a few moments before letting go. It takes Michael a second to figure out, but when he does and pushes Gavin’s head right down until his nose bumps the skin of his groin, Gavin groans and the sound shoots right through him and makes his knees weak. “Jesus _fuck_ , Gavin,” he chokes out, and Gavin moans encouragement and tongues the underside of his dick, and Michael is lost.

His hips snap forwards each time he pulls Gavin’s head in, torn between squeezing his eyes closed and just _feeling_ the way his dick bumps the back of Gavin’s throat with each thrust, or looking down at him, flushed and sweating with his lips forming a perfect _O_. Gavin shifts just a little, breathing harsh through his nose, and Michael opens his eyes to look down, watches Gavin frantically unzip his own slacks to wrap his hand around himself and pump in time with Michael’s motions.

Gavin’s breathing gets heavier, more rapid. Michael watches him clench his eyelids shut, lips shiny and stretched, and moves his second hand from where it’s covering Gavin’s on his hip to take an extra hold on his head. “Fuck,” Michael groans again. His entire body feels on fire, tightening, toes curling. Gavin moans and sobs around his dick, hand speeding up, and Michael’s fingers clench around his head. “Gav, fuck, I’m so fucking close, shit,” and Gavin hums and opens his eyes, meets Michael’s gaze, and that’s it, Michael is done. His fingers tighten hard, hips stuttering, and he throws his head back to the wall. “ _Shit, shit, shit.”_

Gavin makes a startled noise deep in his throat and pulls away, but when Michael opens his eyes Gavin is swallowing anyway, and wiping his own hand clean with a tinge of distaste colouring his face. Michael can’t help himself – he laughs, tiredly, and then cards his fingers gently through Gavin’s hair, soothing where his nails have dug in. Gavin looks back up to him and smiles, lets Michael heave him back to his feet to press up against him, holding Michael captive against the wall.

“I really like you, Michael,” Gavin murmurs against his neck, and Michael smiles to himself.

“Shut the fuck up,” Michael tells him, shooting fondness and warmth through the bond to soften the words, and Gavin chuckles breathily against his skin. “Come on, shower.”

“And bed?” Gavin adds sleepily, pulling away.

Michael leans in to kiss the side of his mouth, wet and pink and swollen, and hums agreement. “Shower and bed.”

 

* * *

 

One Sunday a few weeks later, Michael and Gavin get sent out to kill the plutonium smugglers after all. Jack accompanies them to Florida and gets them out of Jacksonville port on a sleek little RHIB requisitioned from the Navy. The sea is mild and the breeze cool, and smothered in the dark of night they change into combat wetsuits while Jack slowly cruises them out closer to the anchored cargo ship the smugglers are on. They slip into the water a quarter nautical mile from the ship and swim through the water, pulling themselves up the ladder port side and dragging themselves on deck.

Much of the ship is abandoned, crew presumably in their berths. Michael leads Gavin around cargo containers, pausing every now and then for Gavin to have a chance to listen and look and smell, pointing Michael forwards through the ship.

It’s clear the crew feels safe and secure out here, because when Gavin leads him and Michael to their berths, the cabins are unlocked and, in fact, don’t have their doors closed at all. Michael raises an eyebrow and gestures silently into the room, confused, but Gavin just shrugs and gestures himself, _after you_. Michael quietly draws his knife, and they set to work.

It’s terribly bloody work, but their orders are clear – eliminate _everyone_ – and the hardest part is doing it silently and quickly enough that the whole ship is done before the sun even thinks about colouring the ocean’s horizon out east. And for the most part, it goes exceedingly well, until Gavin is taking care of the last guy in the last cabin’s berth, and someone walks around the corner into the cabin and smacks into Michael.

“What the fuck?” the smuggler demands in surprise, before his eyes widen watching Gavin killing his crewmate. Michael tries to respond quickly, but the smuggler is already running, and Michael has to tear off after him. He desperately hopes this is the last guy, because he’s heading for the communication room – already cleared – and Michael can’t let him send an SOS. Officially, this is a smuggling deal gone wrong, a signal and getting caught by someone not on the official CIA investigation-slash-clean-up team would be disaster.

So Michael pushes himself harder, catches up, and leaps forward to tackle the smuggler down. They smack to the deck with a crash, a grunt from Michael and a choked yell from the smuggler, and wrestle furiously, the knife flinging from his hand. Michael takes an elbow into his ribs and can’t catch his breath, but he does manage to knee the smuggler in the crotch, and the smuggler yells and tenses, and Michael can flip him and pin him down, and pulls his gun from his thigh holster to press against the smuggler’s temple.

There are tears in the smuggler’s eyes, face red, struggling to breathe while Michael catches his own breath, ribs aching. The delay is just enough time for the smuggler to twitch, eye’s meeting Michael’s suddenly, and Michael recognises it as the prelude to an escape attempt. He can’t risk it, so pulls the trigger.

When he pulls himself – swaying a little – to his feet, and turns to go back to find Gavin in the cabin, only to find that Gavin is already there, staring hot enough to burn with his knife in one hand, blood dripping from his fingertips, shoulders slumped a little and panting.

“Did we get them all?” Michael asks, and Gavin immediately straightens and rolls his shoulders before closing his eyes for a few moments.

“We got them all,” Gavin confirms when he reopens his eyes, and together they go back portside, slide down the ladder, and slip back through the ocean to Jack.

Later, when they’re back home and cleaned off, Gavin pushes Michael back flat on the bed and climbs over him, and then rides him desperately into the mattress. Michael is starting to see a real theme emerging after these missions.

 

* * *

 

Michael wakes when the mattress dips and rises, blankets falling down a little to expose his shoulder. It’s obviously Gavin, getting up for whatever reason, so Michael reaches out blindly to try and grab him to keep him there. He misses, completely, and his hand just softly drops down to the warm sheets where Gavin was. That’s when Michael cracks his eyes open to properly pay attention.

The room is dark, basically pitch black except for the gentle glow of Gavin’s phone against his ear, and silent except for Gavin’s soft voice murmuring into it. “Yes, sir,” Gavin says softly, and a tremor of worry trickles through the bond. He moves into the bathroom and flicks the light on, and Michael squints against the sudden brightness. “I understand. Where is she?” There’s quiet for a moment before Gavin sighs. “Really? So _I_ have to do it.”

Michael shifts and sits up, hugging his knees to his chest, and looking into the bathroom where Gavin is pacing, running his fingers through sleep-muddled hair. “We’re not friends,” Gavin snorts. “That’s not my concern. But I’m not going into this half-cocked, not anymore.” More silence, then, “Not if it puts this team at risk.” And as Gavin says it, he looks up and catches Michael’s eyes in the mirror. His own eyes widen, and then he turns to face him, walks over to the boundary between bedroom and bathroom, and closes the door. And at the same time, the niggling itch of nervousness through the bond cuts off, and there’s no feedback there at all anymore.

Michael thinks two things – first, when the fuck did Gavin learn to block the bond like that? And second, _how dare he_?

He has enough time to simmer while Gavin wraps up his conversation, and the moment Gavin opens the door and walks back into the bedroom Michael crosses his arms. “What the fuck was that?” he demands. Gavin doesn’t meet his eyes as he moves around the room, dressing. “Seriously, asshole, what’s going on?”

Gavin frowns. “I have to go into the office early,” he says, as if that’s an explanation at all. “Something is happening at MI6, I need to take care of it.” Michael moves, ready to get out of bed to go with him, but Gavin puts a hand up to stop him. “Just me. I’ll catch a cab.”

“If this is some Sentinel bullshit, don’t you think I should be involved now?” Michael asks as Gavin moves to the bedside and slides his watch onto his wrist. Gavin smiles.

“It’s not,” he says, but Michel can tell instantly he’s lying, and he still hasn’t unblocked the bond. Gavin leans in to kiss Michael on the forehead, and Michael wants to pull away but can’t bring himself to. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” Gavin murmurs against his skin, and then he’s turning away and leaving Michael alone in a cold bed, in a quiet apartment, without even the hum of the bond to keep him company.

When he does make it into the office later that morning, Gavin isn’t even there. “Said he had some external MI6 stuff to deal with,” Geoff shrugs, and Michael frowns and huffs and sits at his desk alone too.

“Tell Gavin we need him here tomorrow,” Jack insists at the end of the day when Michael is packing up, and Michael agrees, but he rubs his bond mark as he does it and hopes no one notices or calls him out on it.

He makes dinner and drinks a beer alone, gets only a single text from Gavin letting him know he’ll be home late, and finally gets into an empty bed. He’s jolted awake at 3 in the morning when Gavin climbs in, finally home, but there’s still nothing from the bond. “What’s going on?” Michael asks, and Gavin leans over to kiss his eyebrow.

“I’ll tell you soon,” he promises, and gives nothing more.

And then, after days and days of this, of nothing but cryptic answers and a physical and emotional distance Michael hasn’t experienced since Gavin’s arrival so many months ago, Michael wakes up suddenly one early morning to the bond _screaming_ in fear and pain before it shuts down again. Michael is out of bed in a flash. “Gavin?” he yells into the apartment, but there’s no answer. “ _Gavin_?”

The apartment is completely empty, he quickly discovers, and everything is normal except for the single page of lined paper covered in Gavin’s scrawl, stuck to the front door. _Tried to keep you safe_ , it reads. _Here are my CO’s contact details just in case. Might want to let him know you’re my Guide._ And then below are a list of numbers and code phrases to use.

There’s another brief throb of pain through the bond, pulling in the direction of the office, and Michael wastes no time tugging on jeans and shoes, barely remembering to lock his apartment as he leaves, driving furiously down to the office and just hoping he’s not too late.

When he gets there, the parking lot is already filling up. He recognises Geoff’s and Jack’s and Ryan’s cars, and they’re standing around the doors gesturing wildly to each other. When Michael leaps out of his car and runs towards them, Geoff jumps in front of him, holding him back from the doors with both hands on his shoulders.

“Listen to me, kid,” Geoff tells him firmly. “You don’t want to go in there just yet.” And to Michael, that tells him that he absolutely has to, because something horrible has happened and somehow everyone but him got alerted to it early, and Gavin is _scared and in pain_ and Michael has to reach him. He shoves Geoff aside and runs in, ignoring Geoff calling his name and Jack yelling at him to stop.

Ray is already in the office, staring around and taking notes, and he looks up in surprise when Michael runs in with his hair bouncing and his face hot, tears already springing to his eyes and threatening to fall. There’s blood on the carpet – _is it too much blood?_ – and the chairs have been thrown about. There’s a bullet hole in the wall – _only a pistol_ – and Gavin’s computer screen is smashed. There, next to it, taped to Michael’s monitor is another note. This one is blood stained a little, and taped to it is a chunk of hair that Michael recognises as Gavin’s – _cut, thank Christ, not pulled out_ – and Michael moves close.

“Don’t touch anything, yet,” Ray warns, but doesn’t make a move to get him to leave and in fact sounds sympathetic and looks like he completely understands why Michael needs to be here. Michael nods, and leans in to read the note.

_Dear Michael,_

_I honestly don’t know why he tried to keep you a secret. Maybe he just didn’t want me to know that now someone holds his leash, someone who can make him do the work I’ve been trying to get him on for years. You’re probably a reasonable person, choice of company excluded. We should talk._

_I have Gavvers. Come find me. Two days, or I’ll reveal both of you._

_Love, Tammy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to thank you all for your patience! I've continued receiving lovely comments on this piece, and a bunch of kudos, and honestly every single one of them kept me working on this.
> 
> I started a PhD a few months ago, and time has been limited. But I always had this ready to be finished, and now was the time. I hope it's worth the wait.


	6. May We Stay Lost on Our Way Home?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael thinks about dying here, about seeing Gavin die here when there's nothing Michael can do except listen to Geoff in his ear demanding to know what's going on and getting no response. He thinks about surviving without Gavin and how that would be so much worse. He thinks about only Gavin surviving – clumsy and distracted and utterly perfect Gavin – and Michael will not let any of that happen.

“How did she get in?” Michael asks, sounding much calmer than he feels. It’s the first of many questions he has – _Why did she call you all? How did she get him? Why didn’t he tell me_? Photos of the scene have been taken, samples of blood and hair and prints collected, and the office cleaned up. Michael keeps glancing at the blood on the floor – foaming cleaner fizzes over it where the clean-up crew has attended to it. In an hour, there’ll be nothing there. In two days, will the rest of Gavin still be somewhere?

“We don’t know,” Geoff admits, snapping Michael’s attention back.

“There’s nothing on the CCTV,” Ray adds. “Nothing on film from any of the nearby buildings either. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though. She could have messed with the cameras.”

Davis had done something to the camera, the day Michael had first kissed Gavin. Michael rubs his bond mark.

“Did Gavin say anything about this to you?” Ryan asks. “Any indication he thought she found him, anything about being followed?”

Michael shakes his head. “No, nothing. He... He hasn’t said much of anything. Just that MI6 had something going on.” That actually jogs his memory. “Shit, wait.” He pulls Gavin’s note from the apartment out of his pocket. “I found this when the bond woke me up.”

Geoff takes it and reads through it. “You better give them a call,” he says slowly, handing the sheet back to him. “I’m willing to bet this MI6 business had to do with this bitch.” Vaguely, Michael recognises that Geoff doesn’t seem angry that Gavin kept this from them all. Time for that when he’s been found, probably.

The letter feels like a dead weight in Michael’s hand as he carries it over to Geoff’s desk where the office phone sits. He sits down heavily, and shakes his hands firmly to stop them trembling. The problem is, now he’s staring at the phone and getting his hands under control, he still can’t pick the damn thing up, and his mind is screaming at him because Gavin _needs_ him to do this and he can’t. He can’t.

The moment he reveals himself to the British government, everything falls apart. He’s outing Gavin and the fact that he’s bonded now, and not even bonded to someone who might be able to work for MI6 because he’s American. So he’s outing himself as a Guide who has been selfish and keeping himself in what, by all rights, should be a position in the CIA held by a Sentinel – and no amount of Gavin’s, “You mean everything,” can fix that train of thought, now.

And of course, now he’s panicking. He can barely think straight, and Gavin isn’t there to rub their bond marks together to soothe him and _Christ he can’t breathe._

“Give us a minute, here,” he hears Geoff say from somewhere in the room, and distantly he recognises the team leaving, and then Geoff is crouching in front of him and staring him in the eye. “Hey,” Geoff says, and Michael struggles to draw breath. “Tell me about the guy in Washington.”

Of all the things Michael might have been expecting, that isn’t it. He’s so surprised he manages to take breaths again. “What?”

“Tell me about the guy in Washington,” Geoff repeats.

“You know the fucking story.”

“Remind me.”

Michael frowns, but he doesn’t look away. He's had to recount this story so many times to so many officers it's a clinical recitation now. “I stumbled across details about a kidnapping ring running out of Russia. The guys organising it were ex-military, mostly other-than-honourable discharges. And I mean, I’d only just passed my own training, you know? So this was shitty to find. I’d worked so hard to get in, just been offered my CIA position, I was idealistic and fucking determined to prove I could do this. So I collected every single scrap of information I could find, and compiled it into a file, and took it right to my supervisor.” Geoff nods and gestures for him to continue. “And she was interested in it. So we started organising and researching more, and we found the guy who was basically in charge of the fucking thing, and we started following him."

"Go on," Geoff prompts.

Michael shrugs. "We followed him for weeks, got a bunch of stuff, enough to convict, and then he went underground. And when I was in Washington for training while we were trying to find him, I fucking saw him on the street. We had the chance to arrest him, so I called my supervisor and she told me to wait." It makes Michael furious to think about, even now. "Because they wanted to catch him in Russia, in the act. They couldn't understand that he was just the ringleader, he didn't do the footwork. But all those other guys hadn't done a damn thing while he was gone, they didn't care that much. He needed to go, and the ring would shut down. And Washington was playing with people's lives, families would be torn apart so they could fucking catch him in the act. So I decided, fuck that, and I followed him back to his hotel and I shot him."

And then Michael had spent a very uncomfortable few weeks in maximum security in the Camp Pendleton Brig, isolated from other inmates because for some reason the military had taken his efforts to expose the kidnapping ring as part of a premeditated action. In the end, everyone who had ever been connected to the military had eventually heard about what he had done, even though they never found out why, and although his identity had been kept incredibly secret.

And one day, a big guy with a beard and a gun had come in to his cell. Michael had just assumed he was there to kill him, so had immediately disarmed this guy nearly twice his size and stood standing with the gun now in his own hands, pointed at him. "Impressive," the man had said. "Stupid, but impressive. I'm Jack." And that was how Michael had been given a job with just two rules to follow that Michael, somehow, keeps breaking.

"Bet you were pretty nervous,” Geoff says, pulling Michael from his memory. It’s not a question, but Michael shrugs anyway.

“Sure. He was ex-Marine, they go hard. But you know I had to.”

“You didn’t let your fear stop you from saving people,” Geoff adds, and Michael sees what he’s getting at.

“This is different,” Michael mutters, dropping his eyes, “I’m fucking everything up for myself, here.”

“Look,” Geoff tells him firmly. “You’re a damn excellent agent, Michael. Putting aside all the bullshit you did with this Guide thing, the fact is that you’re a fucking good asset, and you’re family. If they want you, if they want anything to happen to you, they’ll have to go through me and this entire fucking crew before they can even _think_ about even _looking_ at you, okay? We protect our own, and we’re going to keep you and Gavin _both_ safe. But we have to get him back, first.”

There aren’t tears in his eyes, Michael insists to himself. He blinks hard a few times, and then nods, turning to the phone and picking up the receiver. “Good lad,” Geoff murmurs, and stands to step back and give him some space. And then very quickly Michael is dialling and providing pass codes, and suddenly there’s another voice on the line and Michael can’t back out anymore.

“Yeah, hi. Uh, I’m Michael. I’m Gavin’s Guide.”

 

* * *

 

In the end, Michael finds he has little to be worried about. Gavin’s CO doesn’t seem at all concerned about the fact that Gavin has picked himself a Guide, though he does initially appear less than thrilled that Michael is American – “Of bloody course Gavin would bond with a damn Yank,” and Michael drily responds that yes, Gavin is a real piece of shit, and after a few moments of surprised silence the CO laughs and the entire conversation is much more friendly and easy after that.

Michael gets told all about Tamara and Gavin, much of which he’s already heard from Gavin himself, but some of the information is new or different – he signals Geoff to get his post-it notes and a pen – and in the end Michael comes out of it with a pile of notes and a securely emailed dossier on everything Tamara has ever done, and the most up-to-date information on her whereabouts and activities.

“To be honest,” Gavin’s CO admits, “we lost track of her about a fortnight ago.” Here Michael squints and writes down the word with a question mark. “I let Gavin know we’d lost her and that we’d received another threat from her, and he was looking into it.” Things start to fall into place for Michael at this point, and he curses under his breath. From the side, Geoff raises his eyebrow at him and Michael signals for him to wait with a single raised finger, scowling.

“Did he get anything for you?” Michael asks, but the CO tells him not really, except that Gavin had been getting more nervous. "Fuck," Michael spits. "He must have known she was getting close to him. Why the fuck didn't he tell me?" 

"Gavin's always been like that," the CO says. "Won't ever shut up but never says things that will hurt the people he cares about." There's a long pause while Michael processes this. "Look, get him back." 

"I will," Michael promises, and they hang up. He turns to Geoff, who is scrolling through the emailed information now and taking notes of his own, and sighs heavily. "It's not a lot to go on, Geoff." 

"It's enough. We've worked with less." But never at such high stakes. The thought goes unsaid. "Grab everyone back, let's get going on this." 

"She has to be near Austin," Michael decides out loud when everyone is back in the office and reading through the files themselves. "Her note says she wants to meet me, she can't have gone far." 

So they set their sights on Austin and its surrounds, going through files and previous GPS data to get ideas about favoured locations and movement habits, sending requisitions for cell phone information and credit card use. Ryan is just determining that she hasn't used any of the cards that MI6 knew about, and Jack is just telling Michael that a call had been made from Tamara's cell to Gavin's an hour before the Hunters had gotten calls when Michael's bond flares to life.  

It throbs with a deep, low ache, and tendrils of confusion wriggle their way in before giving way to nervousness and the jittery feeling Michael has come to associate with Gavin trying to hide it. It takes Michael a moment to process all this, and then another to realise that he can feel which direction it's coming from. He gasps and jumps up from his chair, arm out as though pointing it will help.  

"Michael?" Jack questions, but he waves him off. 

"He's that way," Michael announces to the room, still pointing with his arm outstretched.  

"How far?" Geoff asks, but Michael shakes his head while moving his arm side to side just a little. 

"I can't tell right now, not exactly." He settles his arm straight again. "This direction exactly, and probably... More than 10 miles but less than 20?" 

"Buda?" Geoff questions, but it's that very moment that the dull ache of the bond escalates to white-hot searing pain, shooting up Michael's arm and coursing across his chest to his other hand, and Michael's only response is to scream and fall to his knees, clutching desperately at the bond.  

Ray is by his side in a second, but Michael barely recognises that. His left hand feels like it's on fire, the bond like a hot brand has been shoved into it. It feels like an eternity, the Hunters yelling around him demanding to know what's happening, but Michael can't answer through the pain and around his own screaming. Then another sharp, short pain, this one at his temple, and the bond cuts off again. Michael is left trembling and sweaty on the floor, cheeks streaked with tears.  

"Fuck," he manages to choke out. 

"What the fuck?" Ray murmurs, and Michael shakes his head.  

"We have to find him," Michael begs desperately through tears. He glances up. Jack looks as though he is about to cry himself, Geoff looks furious and Michael immediately recognises that for once this isn't directed at him. Ray is nodding and murmuring assurances, hand hesitantly squeezing Michael's shoulder for support, but it still takes a couple of minutes before Michael can wobble to his feet to keep helping. 

Geoff, thanks to Michael's descriptions, has decided to focus sights on Buda. On the outskirts of the town,  on the far side from Austin, a massive old warehouse complex sits - Geoff says it's officially condemned judging by old local government records, but never actually destroyed and the documents don't indicate a reason for any of it.  

Ray struggles to find any cameras connected into the area that he can use for recon. After an hour and a half he swears and tells them it's wasting time, and appropriates satellites to work for them instead. Ryan whistles at this, impressed, but Ray just rolls his eyes and tells them that there's heaps of things he can get access to if they'd shut up and let him tell them about it. 

The images coming from the satellites indicate the complex is surrounded by a well-maintained chain-link fence covered in razor-wire. On a five minute delay for photos, the team can point out guard patrols, but without actually watching it is impossible for them to figure out a pattern, if one exists.  

"Probably don't need security for a condemned complex like this, right?" Jack suggests, and the firepower on the backs of the guards make Michael think they've struck gold, here.  

The sun has set - just one more day to get him - when Geoff manages to get old blueprints of the complex, old maps along with them, and is explaining that they can't rely on these completely when Michael feels the bond fading back into his senses.  

It's a mess of pain and fear and confusion that makes Michael wince. Geoff notices – Geoff notices everything – but Michael shakes his head. "I’m fine," Michael assures him, "I'll be right back." He slips from the office rubbing his wrist.  

Gavin is on the verge of panic, Michael can tell. He desperately wants to be able to tell Gavin that he's going to be okay, that they're looking for him, that they'll find him, but there's no way to contact him except through the bond, and Michael just hasn't been good at that, historically. 

But the thing is, Gavin had said that it was just a matter of  _feeling really hard in his direction_ and fuck, but Michael hasn't felt so much or so hard in his life than when it comes to Gavin. He clings to tiny scraps of calm and assuredness and encouragement and mentally balls them up, and at first it feels stupid to try and shove an intangible thing like feelings towards someone, but god he tries. He tries and tries, desperate, tears prickling at his eyes again, and even though he's feeling this hard nothing happens.  

"Come on," Michael murmurs, and a few moments later the bond shivers, and tiny tendrils of hesitation and hope brush against the edges of his awareness. "Fuck, Gav, yes!" Michael sobs, and pushes those same feeling of assurance and comfort through again, and from Gavin's end the sense of calm and hope strengthens and is followed by warmth and fondness before slowly fading off to nothing again.  

Michael hopes he understood that to mean that they're coming.  

 

* * *

 

Geoff jabs a finger in three places on the map. "We have to set up on these roofs. As much information as we can gather, and we move in from there when we're confident. We need to know how many people are in there, where Gav is, how to get in and how to get out." 

Jack crosses his arms and frowns. "Even with all four of us out there, three places is a lot to cover." 

"You're right. It's going to take all of us out there to do this properly." And here, slowly, he looks up and stares at Ryan. There's a very long pause while everyone analyses this, until Ryan chuckles lowly and drops his eyes. "You think you can follow my instructions and  _only_ my instructions?" 

"Yes, boss," Ryan answers, and Michael isn't sure he believes him, but he's not going to say no to the extra eyes, the extra guns. Hell, even if Ryan goes on a murderous rampage, as long as Gavin and the team aren't harmed Michael might even support it. It's pretty amazing that Geoff is bringing him in, too. 

"I want Ryan and Michael up here," Geoff says, pointing to one roof on the satellite map. "Michael, you're obviously going to be infiltrating, so light gear, knives and pistols, a stun gun just in case. Ryan, how is your aim now that you've been benched so long?" 

Ryan snorts. "I'm at the range every weekend." 

"Of course you are," Geoff says drily at the same time Ray laughs. "Well, a more heavy duty set for you. M4 carbine," and Ryan grins, "and maybe some explosives. Maximum havoc  _as I order it_." 

Ryan flaps his hand. "Yeah yeah, I got it." Geoff stares for a long moment and Michael can see the wheels turning, debating if it's worth it. Eventually, he turns to Jack and pokes the map again, a roof on the opposite side of the complex.  

"You and me, bud, right up here. Standard equipment, I'm thinking shotgun, pistols, and breach charges. Our goal is to get in, distract the indoor guards, assuming there is any, and clear as many out for Michael as we can. We'll want full body armour and headgear for that." Jack nods, and Geoff points to Ray. 

"Sniper, obviously, and eyes." 

Ray gives athumbs up. "Obviously." Geoff points him to the third roof, this one closer to Michael's position than Geoff's.  

"From here. I want you picking off patrols and anyone else that comes investigating. You're going to clear Michael's direct entrance, and stop any backup getting in on that side, got it?" Ray nods his understanding. "The trick is going to be communication. Michael will need to know what's going on and where, and any intel we get about layout is going to be useful for him finding Gavin. I don't care about casualties in there. They took one of us? They can get fucked." 

It seems a straight forward enough plan – get in, collect information, take everyone out, get Gavin. Michael's concern is that there so many unknowns here. They don't know where Gavin is. They don't know where Tamara is. They don't know how many guards and people are in there. They don't know about traps or counterintelligence protocols they might be up against. They just don't know.  

Michael's face twists thinking about this. Jack sees it and pats his shoulder, mistaking it for worry about Gavin – and he's not entirely wrong, that concern is definitely there as well, a low buzz beneath his skin – and Michael forces himself to smile with reassurance. If there's one thing he's good at, it's hiding emotions, right?  

The set up, despite them working diligently and quickly, still takes an hour or so. Gearing up –sourcing Jack and Geoff a couple of SWAT helmets – and packing everything they think they might need takes enough time that by the end Michael is a vibrating bundle of nerves and anxiety, and when they drive to Buda before splitting up to walk to their respective starting points the sky is already starting to lighten.

Ryan makes sure everyone's earpieces are set for constant feedback. "I'm  _communications_ ," he insists when Ray snorts at him. "Like fuck I'm letting you imbeciles run in there without proper equipment. And if Michael is shooting assholes he's not going to have time to press a button.  _And_ , Jack and Geoff can't even reach theirs in those stupid-ass helmets." Geoff chuckles and thanks him, they run a check of the earpieces, and then split up. 

Ray announces he's in position just as Ryan and Michael reach their building. It's a three-storey old hotel, fire escape on the side for them to climb to the roof. Ryan tells the team they're ready while Geoff and Jack curse and swear as they have to scale the side of their building only for Jack to burst into wheezy laughs once they're up. "There's a fucking ladder, Geoff missed it!" It eases the tension while they set up. 

Ryan passes Michael a pair of thermal binoculars and raises his own to his eyes. "Bunch of them hanging out around windows on this side," Ryan murmurs. "Couple on the ground moving." 

"Same over here," Geoff agrees.  

"Too dark still for this scope," Ray tells them. "Won't be long, though." This works in their favour anyway, Michael thinks, because they can take the time to watch the patrols and figure out a vague pattern. 

Geoff announces that he and Jack can't see a dick from their side, and climb back down the ladder to look from ground level and get ready to move when it's time.  

Ray, with his head for numbers and codes and patterns figures out the 15-7-15 minute serpentine loops the guards are doing, and he’s close enough to the complex corner to be able to sight most of the guards on their path. Ryan says a properly timed breach from Geoff's side will bring any other guards out in a direction Ray can pick them off. 

"It's a good plan," Geoff agrees, and Ryan mutters that of course it is, because he thought of it. Michael smiles at this, despite the utter turmoil inside, the mix of nerves and adrenaline that comes at the start of any mission combined with the fear he feels for Gavin in there. "Ray, you want to set us going at the start of the next cycle?" 

"Will do," Ray murmurs, and Michael recognises the tone as concentration, and can only imagine Ray is right now going through the movements to get his sniper in exactly the right position for shooting. After a few minutes the first guard drops and Michael hears the sniper fire through their earpieces. Second guard, third guard, fourth guard when they come around the corner of one of the buildings, and then a fifth when they see one of their colleagues before they can call for backup. 

"Can't see any more on this side," Michael tells everyone. "Going to ground." 

"Jack and I moving in for breach," Geoff answers, and Ryan draws his carbine and salutes to Michael. Michael nods back and starts jogging down the fire escape to take cover by the building side, eyes on the door he wants to go through on the other side of the chain-link fence. "Everyone in position?" They answer affirmative. "Breach in three...two...one..." And from the other side of the complex an explosion sounds and smoke starts rising.  

"Hold," Ryan cautions, and a few moments later Michael hears Jack's shotgun fire, and his own door opens and three guards pour out. Ryan laughs over the comms and opens with his carbine, blood spatters and Michael then hears, "Okay, go." 

He pulls out wire clippers from a pocket and jogs low to the fence, cutting just enough for him to slip through, then he's jogging across the yard and crossing into the building. "I'm in," he whispers. Jack and Geoff don't answer, but he hears them shooting. "I'm going to find Gavin."  

Honestly, he'd been expecting rooms upon rooms of guards and people trying to stop him, but this section of the complex is empty - clearly the people taking care of this section are the people Ray and Ryan have already killed. So Michael sticks to the walls and keeps his ears focused on his immediate surrounds rather than Ryan's delighted laughter or Ray's muttering or Geoff's swearing or Jack's words of encouragement. It's just Michael and his portion of the mission.  

It still surprises him, though, when a door opens into the corridor in front of him and two men holding pistols walk out. They're mid-conversation and Michael clearly startles them as much as they have him. It only takes them a moment to figure out he's not supposed to be there and raise their pistols,  but by then Michael has dived forwards into a tumble roll to get by their feet. He jumps up and slams the heel of his hand upwards into the chin of one of them. The guy stumbles back and falls down cold. 

The second guy tries to swing the gun around, but Michael ducks under his arm to avoid it, turning and grabbing his arm and wrist while it's over his shoulder. It takes a bit of force, but Michael can shift his weight and use his hip and grasp on the guy's arm to throw him over his shoulder and onto the ground. He twists his hands when the guy is down – the wrist makes a sickening crack as it breaks – and the guy screams and drops his gun. Michael swoops down to grab it, and the guy has barely managed to move when Michael shoots him. The other guy isn't moving, but Michael isn't taking chances and so shoots him as well. 

The shots ring loud in the corridor. Michael ducks through the door the men had come from and finds an alcove to sneak into. Only moments later another two guards come into the room and walk past him. Michael waits, waits, and a third guard appears beside him. Michael grabs a knife from his vest and stabs him in the neck. He gurgles wetly and the other two guards spin to investigate. Michael pulls the knife free and throws it to embed in one throat, and draws another knife from his belt as the third guard comes at him.  

The guard ducks under Michael's swing with the knife and punches Michael in the ribs. Michael grunts and swings again, and the yell with the sudden brief resistance in the knife tells him he's connected. The guard blocks the slash to his face with his hands, balls his bleeding hands and takes a punch. Michael blocks it with a forearm and the guard uses the opportunity to grab Michael's arm to try and wrestle the knife from him, but his hands are bleeding badly and he can't get a proper grip. Michael elbows his nose and loses his knife when he stabs it into the guard's shoulder, then kicks him back with his boot into the guard's chest. The guard goes down heavily but manages to draw a gun and shoots it. 

It's an instinctive reaction to try and dodge it, but the guard is a bad shot anyway and it clips Michael's upper arm. He yelps, and pulls out a pistol of his own, and he's a much better shot. The bullet hits the guard's head, and Michael waits for any other movement nearby, but nothing happens.  

The pause makes him pay attention to his gunshot wound, and it _fucking hurts_. "Ah,  _fuck_!" he spits, pressing a palm to the shot for a moment. His hand comes away bloody, and he leans heavily against the wall to catch his breath.  

"What happened?" Geoff demands. Michael winces. 

"I got fucking shot," he replies.  

"Shit. Pull out, Michael, Jack and I--" 

"No," Michael insists. "Just a fucking graze, it's fine. I'm not leaving without Gavin." 

"Be careful," Jack says, and Michael cannot describe how grateful he is that Jack isn't arguing, and understands why he's staying.  

"Yeah," Michael replies, then pushes up from the wall and keeps moving. He can hear Ryan and Geoff and Jack fighting, and Ray calling outside movements as they happen. Michael pushes that to the back of his mind. 

The complex is somewhat labyrinthine, and more than once Michael finds himself doing a loop. Then, at last, Michael glances around a corner to see two guys guarding a door. Michael can only assume that's an important door, and he's very conscious of time. He readjusts his gun and swings around the corner and pops two shots immediately. The guards drop, and Michael runs down to the door to open it and slip inside.  

The sight pulls him up short.  

Gavin is tied to a chair, head slumping into his chest. Michael can see he's breathing, which is the only positive he can immediately identify. His button-down shirt is torn open and mostly in rags now, and Michael can see his chest and stomach are a mess of scrapes and bruises, dried blood pooled in every dip of his skin. Gavin's left hand looks like it has been crushed, and Michael figures this is probably why he'd gotten that agonising pain through the bond. What's amazing, though, is that Gavin's whole body looks like it's been through hell during the time he's been gone, but Michael hasn't felt any of the rest of it. Gavin must have kept the bond solidly blocked almost the whole time he was gone for Michael not to have known this had happened.  

Of all things, it's the missing chunk of hair on the side of Gavin's had that makes Michael move to him, finally. "Fucking Christ, Gav," he murmurs, and even to him it sounds like he's going to burst into tears.  

"Did you find him?" Geoff asks, shooting still in the background while he talks.  

"Yeah," Michael chokes out. "He's in a bad way, Geoff. You better get a car ready for a hospital run." 

Geoff starts on that immediately, and Michael drops to his knees by Gavin's side, sliding his palm to Gavin's cheek to gently lift his head and look at him better. His thumb wipes a blood splatter away from below Gavin's eye. His other eye is bruised and swollen, his lip split, sweat and dirt stains on his forehead. Slowly, Gavin's eyes flutter open, as much as they can around the swelling, and he looks over Michael's face slowly, confused.  

"Mich'l?" Gavin slurs. "You..?" 

There go the tears. "Yeah, Gav, I'm here. You're okay, I've got you." Michael tries to smile reassuringly. Gavin's eyes are dull and unfocused. 

"'m sorry, Michael," Gavin murmurs. Michael tries to tell him it's fine, but Gavin's slow, slurred speech won't be stopped. "She found out abou' you an' I wanted to keep you safe." 

Michael pulls out his knife and starts cutting the cable ties at Gavin's wrists and ankles. "I know, it's okay. But that's why I'm here, to keep you safe, too. We're in this together, yeah? If I wasn't prepared to deal with this shit with you, I wouldn't have bonded with you, idiot." 

Gavin is quiet for a moment, watching while Michael cuts him free. "I hurt a lot," he whispers.  

Michael laughs humourlessly. "I bet, buddy. She did a real number on you." 

"The bond..." 

 _Ah._  Michael smiles. "I’m pretty miserable without it. I can take the pain." Gavin looks at him carefully, studying his face, and slowly the bond starts fading in to the eyes of Michael's consciousness, and with it comes sharp pains interspersed with dull aches in what feels like every part of his body. "Hah,  _fuck_." Carefully he moves his bond mark over Gavin's and the fizzles soothe him around the pain from Gavin's crushed hand. "See? Better." 

 Gavin looks like he's about to reply, but then his eyes shift to the side to look behind Michael's head, and he freezes. With the bond back in connection, Michael can sense the change in the room as well. "Michael," Gavin whispers.  

"I know," Michael reassures him, and then louder, "You're a real crazy bitch, you know that?" He stands slowly and turns.  

Tamara shrugs. "I'd say that depends on who you ask." 

Michael gestures angrily to Gavin, mostly broken in his chair. "Really? Because fucking torture seems pretty goddamn crazy to me." 

Tamara slips her hands into the pockets of her cargo pants. "If it gets results for MI6, I do anything. Gavin really has been a tad too stubborn about this whole thing, so I kicked it off like this." 

Michael has so much he wants to say. He wants to tell her how Gavin has the backing of the department behind him. He wants to say that Gavin is killing the people on her side under instruction from MI6, not on his own volition. He wants to say that the Hunters are all here specifically to find and kill her. He doesn't. "Gavin isn't going into the front lines," he says instead. "He's doing good work where he is, and he's staying with me." 

Tamara laughs. "Staying with you? You're a bloody Guide. That's not how it works." 

Michael feels his anger bubbling up, and all at once he's thirteen again, finding out that his life isn't his and it's just a matter of time until he gets stuck with someone he hates and stuck following their dreams rather than his own. "And? That's how  _we_  work. Gavin is staying with me." 

"Gavin could be saving lives!" Tamara spits. 

"What do you think we're  _doing_?!" 

She scoffs. "Political assassinations? Please." 

Gavin squeaks in surprise at the same time that Michael laughs and crosses his arms. "Oh, you're one of  _those_  people. You think that all we do is kill people so one government can get the edge over another, you think we kill purely for political gain. You have no idea what we've been doing at all! You know Gavin and I were sent to find information to implicate someone for a crime so we could kill them? Except the information led to another guy entirely. We saved that first person's life. And when we killed the actual culprit, we saved everyone _he had been going to kill_!" 

"That's not--" 

"I'm not fucking done!" Michael snaps. "We took out a whole fucking plutonium smuggling ring. The dock workers who had been unknowingly unloading that shit have radiation poisoning! The people who live nearby have been exposed.  _Innocent_  people! So yeah, we killed them, and we've saved a shitload of people doing it, too. You want more? Because you want Gav to go, where exactly? Iraq, to extract IEDs?" 

 "Libya, actually," Tamara says mildly, as though she were barely listening. "There's a civil war over there, you know." 

"Wherever. You realise, if Gavin went over there, his scatter-brained ass is just going to get killed while he's lost in his damn senses. At least here, with me, he's actually able to do everything and not die in the process." 

Here, Tamara actually looks thoughtful. "Well, maybe my information was bad. Maybe I acted too quickly." 

Michael snorts. "Gee, maybe. You're not taking him. He's my Sentinel, and he means everything to me." 

She shrugs. "Except, here's my problem.  I can't exactly let him go if he won't help me." And she very quickly pulls a gun from her pocket, aims it at Gavin in the chair, and pulls the trigger. 

The bond is back, and the closeness to Gavin is making Michael's senses go haywire. Michael doesn't know if Tamara knows this about Guides or not, but if she does it doesn't cross her mind. Michael recognises the gun coming out of her pocket and turns to Gavin before it's aimed, and kicks the chair out of the way while Tamara squeezes the trigger. The bullet hits the wall where Gavin had been sitting, and from his new position on the ground –half-toppled out of the chair now that he's been cut loose from it – he screams in pain. The agony and shock of it reverberates through Michael as well, and he winces, but grits his teeth against it and uses Tamara's momentary surprise to spin and hook-kick her gun from her hand. 

She yelps, and the gun clatters against the far wall. Michael uses the momentum of his spin to roundhouse at her head, but she ducks below it and pulls a knife from her boot, and throws it at him. It embeds in his shoulder, and Michael yells and stumbles back, before he regains his balance and pulls it free.  

In the time it takes to do it, Tamara has somersaulted towards him, and as she moves to her feet she drives her shoulder into Michael's gut to propel them both into the wall. Michael slams his elbow down between her shoulder blades once, twice, a third time, before throwing her to the side, away from Gavin. She grunts but rolls back to her feet, and takes on a fighting stance. Gavin won't be any help – he’s clutching at his ribs where Michael can feel stabbing pain. But his closeness does mean Michael can feel the air shift ahead of Tamara's spin and back kick aimed at his chest, so can jump out of the way and throw her knife back at her. It slashes her side and sticks into the wall behind her. 

He runs towards her and jabs a punch at her face. She blocks it and returns a hit to the side of his head, which connects, and follow it up by kicking his feet out from under him. Michael cartwheels back to his feet and punches Tamara's temple when he realises she's followed him and is close, and draws another of his knives from his belt when the hit stuns her. This knife he keeps in his hand, blade sticking out of his closed fist on his pinkie end. He aims a hook punch at Tamara's arm – she steps back, but not far enough to avoid the extra reach from the knife, and she takes a slash. Michael follows it up with a backhand strike and stabs her hand.  

She shrieks and punches, he blocks and slashes again, catching her shoulder. Again, this time aimed towards her thigh, which she blocks with a low sweep of her arm, then shoves him back with a boot to his gut. It knocks the wind straight out of him and before he can catch it back Tamara punches him twice in the face, and grabs him by the front of his shirt. 

Struggling to breathe, Michael can see over her shoulder to where Gavin is cringing, still on the ground and shifting slowly, inching closer to the other wall. Tamara knees Michael in the solar plexus – there’s no air in his lungs to lose – and grabs his wrist. She squeezes his wrist and twists, and he drops the knife, she drops his wrist, and catches the handle.  

Michael thinks about dying here, about seeing Gavin die here when there's nothing Michael can do except listen to Geoff in his ear demanding to know what's going on and getting no response. He thinks about surviving without Gavin and how that would be so much worse. He thinks about only Gavin surviving – clumsy and distracted and utterly perfect Gavin – and Michael will not let any of that happen. Tamara moves the knife close to his throat.  

When Gavin calls his name, it's more of a croak, and it's only by virtue of the bond that Michael somehow hears it, a sharp tug of  _'attention!'_  and enhanced hearing. Michael's eyes dart back to him, and Gavin reaches Tamara's gun on the floor and manages to slide it across the floor. It only makes it halfway, but Michael can work with that.  

One hand grabs Tamara's hand to wrench the knife back. She misses blocking his second hand and takes a punch to her cheek. He manages to shove her aside, and dives, grabs the gun – fumbles it and somehow catches it back while he rolls up to one knee – and turns towards Tamara at the same time that she turns back to face him.  

It's training more than anything that makes him gulp in a breath and breathe it out to steady himself, to mentally shove his pain and fear aside, and shoot two bullets into her chest. 

Gavin is gasping on the floor behind him. Tamara stumbles back and collapses against the wall, and even though she doesn't move Michael isn't going to trust her as far as Jack could throw her. He sways to his feet, but keeps the gun trained on her until in his ear Geoff says, "Michael? We have everything clear out here. Are you secure?" 

Tamara doesn't move. Slowly, Michael inches close to her and leans down to check her pulse. Nothing. He pulls in a huge breath he didn’t realise he was holding, and somehow stops himself from vomiting.  

"Michael?" 

"Secure, boss. Tamara is down. I have Gavin," he answers, voice wobblier than he’d hoped as he turns and runs to Gavin's side. He just has to hold it together a little longer, just a little longer. "How are we going with that extraction car?"  

"Pulled up at our entry point just now," Ryan answers. "We're here waiting for you." 

"Out in a second. Okay," he says to Gavin instead, gently holding his arm with one hand and sliding his other hand around him to hold his side. "Let's get you up and to a hospital." Gavin nods his head and together they struggle to their feet, pain across their entire bodies.

They have to climb over bodies and around rubble from the team’s work as they go, and as they pass each person Michael had taken out on his way through his hold on Gavin tightens just a touch.

"I need to tell you," Gavin slurs slightly as they're halfway between the complex door and the chain-link fence. They can see the car, now, and Geoff is starting to climb through the fence to come and help them. Michael glances at Gavin where he's resting heavily on him, one arm over Michael's shoulders keeping him upright. Gavin is staring at him, and Michael can hear his heart fluttering nervously. Immediately, Michael knows what he's going to say, and shakes his head firmly.  

"You can say whatever you want when I get you home, safe, and in bed to sleep." 

"But, Michael--" 

Michael shakes his head again. "Shut your mouth," he tells him, and pulls them up short. Michael turns to him and frames his cheeks with his hands. "Just once, shut your goddamn mouth," he repeats, and kisses him.  

  

* * *

 

"I love you," Gavin blurts out in the back of the car on the way to the hospital.  

Michael chuckles breathily. He doesn't say it back now - he will, very soon - and instead reaches for Gavin's hand to tangle their fingers together. Slowly, Gavin leans into his side and buries his face into Michael’s neck, and smiles.

 

* * *

 

Michael gets the genuine pleasure of calling Gavin’s CO from the hospital while Gavin is in surgery to both confirm that Gavin has been retrieved, and Tamara has been eliminated. Geoff is in another chair across the room from him, tense and worried waiting for Gavin to be wheeled back in, and Michael is glad of his company.

“It’s pretty bad,” Michael tells Gavin’s CO. “His hand is shattered, a few broken ribs, he’s lost a lot of blood, but we’ve got him.” There’s silence for a long while on the other side, and for a brief moment Michael is worried he’s been hung up on.

Then, “You know he needs to come back, right?” And Michael knew this was coming, but he’d at least hoped it wouldn’t be right away. He isn’t quite prepared to deal with this, not now, and certainly not with the kind of finesse and propriety this discussion needs.

“And I’m sure you can appreciate that I don’t want to let him out of my damn sight ever again,” he snaps, and instead of the rebuke he expects he gets laughter instead.

Hours later, Gavin is wheeled back in after surgery. His body is a mess of tubes and gauze, his broken hand completely encased in a cast, and he looks absurdly small. He wakes up later still while Michael is gently running fingers through the parts of his hair that poke through bandages. Gavin is hooked up to a cocktail of drugs and painkillers, dulling the pain for both of them while Gavin is too disoriented to try and block the bond, but Michael is fairly sure they won’t be blocking each other again anyway.

“Mich’l?” Gavin chirps sleepily from the bed. Michael smiles and shifts to look at him properly.

“I’m here. Geoff’s here, too,” he answers, and Gavin’s eyes roll to find him, but give up when he figures out Geoff is just too far on the other side to see. “Everyone wants to check on you, when you’re a little more awake. Just rest now.” Gavin’s neck twitches and Michael thinks that’s probably supposed to be a nod, and then his eyes slide shut and he goes back to sleep.

Michael _does_ know that Gavin will have to go back to England the moment he can take the trip, he knows that. But he also knows that he can handle it, and he’s absolutely certain that no matter what happens, they’ll figure it out.

 

* * *

 

Michael’s alarm goes off an hour earlier than on a usual Monday. He rolls over and turns it off immediately, and flops back down onto the bed, hand running through his curls. The bond itches and he absently scratches at it.

 _100 miles_.

Mentally, he shakes himself. Nerves are pouring in, which is ridiculous, and he’s vaguely amazed he was able to sleep at all, but it’s Monday and he has to make it to work. He drags himself out of bed and takes a whole 10 minute shower – with shampoo and conditioner both – and dries his hair with the hair dryer. He doesn’t manage to eat, but he does drink half a cup of coffee before deciding that was a dumb move and tosses the rest down the sink.

Michael spends a whole thirty minutes picking out a shirt. In the end he decides on a blue button-down, and tucks it into his suit pants. He reaches for a tie and then changes his mind, but does double check the buttons on his cuffs and rematch his belt to his shoes. His eyes are a little itchy – sleepiness, maybe he didn’t sleep as well as he thought – but puts in contacts instead of wearing glasses anyway. He has to turn off the music in his car as he drives to work.

 _40 miles_.

Kara waves when he arrives, and he smiles and waves back. He knows it’s harder for her to tell that it’s him with the mess of yellowing bruises on his face – Ray thinks she’s memorised the bruise patterns – but she seems to do okay.

The crew is already at work, at their desks. They look up when he arrives. Ray waves but doesn’t talk, currently on the phone with someone while tracing an email on his screen with a finger. Jack has a file of photographs open on his desk, and they look like they’re from the 60s. Ryan is clipping a holster around his thigh – he’s going out into the field today, and likes to take every opportunity to remind people about it now that Geoff has garnered agreement with Burnie – and he nods at Michael as he walks in. Geoff is sitting at his desk reading something, and he turns in his chair.

“What time was it supposed-” Michael starts immediately.

“Nine,” Geoff answers, cutting him off with a smirk. Michael glances at his watch and sighs, and moves to his desk to slump in the chair.

It’s 9:20.  _5 miles_.

By 9:25 Michael is almost shivering in his seat. At 9:30 he jumps up and stands in the middle of the room. He smoothes down his shirt and runs his fingers through his hair, ignores Ray’s chuckle behind him and just focuses on the office door.

At 9:32 the door opens and the air is sucked right from his lungs.

Gavin’s eyes catch his immediately, ignoring everyone else in the room, and he grins, dropping his bags.

“You’re always  _fucking_  late,” Michael tells him, but he’s grinning too as he starts forwards.

“The  _plane,_ Michael-” Gavin tries to answer, but by then Michael has reached him and he cuts himself off to slide his good hand into Michael’s hair to gently pull him close, and leans down to kiss him firmly. The cast on his left hand clunks against Michael’s spine as Gavin tries to pull him closer with an arm around his waist. Michael laughs into the kiss, and Gavin smiles against him.

“Alright, knock it off,” Geoff snaps, but Michael can hear that he’s happy for them. They do pull apart, though Gavin keeps his arm around Michael’s waist. “So, do you have them?”

“Oh!” Gavin chirps, and ducks away to his bags. He rummages for a second and pulls out a manila folder to hand to Geoff, who opens it and flicks through the signed forms inside. “It’s official. I’m on permanent loan to the CIA from MI6. Part of the new ‘Sentinel/Guide International Intelligence Protocol.’” He laughs. “Guess you’re stuck with me, lads.”

Jack snorts. “Lucky us,” he deadpans while Geoff puts the folder aside and pulls out two new ones. He holds them out, and Michael takes them both.

Years ago, an eleven-year old had been told to stay away from Sentinels. A thirteen-year-old had decided that fierce and constant anger was the only way to stay safe and stay himself. Barely a year ago, a Guide had felt all-consuming fear and had tried everything to hide himself from detection.

Now, Michael looks over at his Sentinel and smiles, holding out one of the files. “Alright, love. Let’s get to work.”

 

**_The End_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a bonus for waiting for the last chapter, I give you this - the end.
> 
> For every single person who commented, every single person who left kudos, every single person who viewed it once or many times - thank you. I cannot express to you how much that meant to me, and how much it encouraged me to keep going when I thought I wouldn't make it.
> 
> I started this fic in March of 2014 (I mean, Kara was still in charge of the front desk!). I've been posting it for over a year now. Thank you for sticking by it.
> 
> ((In future I intend to complete all fics before posting chapter 1 so, yeah. Lesson learned. ;) ))
> 
> ((Sneaky edit, if you've been back more than once, you're not imagining it. I did indeed add some extra stuff at the end.))

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Shake Shake Shake (And Shut Your Mouth) [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8126750) by [Sandstripe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandstripe/pseuds/Sandstripe)




End file.
